My Lord Jack Page 19

  But now he was tired; he didn’t want to think anymore let alone argue his point. He didn’t want to argue at all. What he wanted was a shave and a bath. He wanted a meal, too, but beyond all else he wanted Claudia. Not that he would allow himself to hold or caress her—since the night of their “dance lesson” he’d told himself that such familiarity must be strictly off-limits. But to hear her voice, see her smile, perhaps touch her hand in passing—any of those simple pleasures would be balm to a soul that suddenly seemed not only bruised but well on its way to rotted.

  In truth, he felt as if his entire person were coated with some invisible slime. Taking advantage of his solitude, he lifted his arm and drew a surreptitious sniff. He didn’t smell bad, or at least he didn’t think he did. Before leaving the inn the night before, he’d washed himself and though the water in the basin had been cold, the soap he’d brought with him, evergreen and mint, had been strong. Even so, he moved to the washstand and sloshed water into the bowl to wash his hands. Not because they’d got dirty—he’d worn gloves, after all—but because the symbolism appealed. But now something felt different, something felt wrong. Not enough, he decided, and started sluicing his face and neck, too. “More,” he said, this time aloud, and tore off his drenched shirt to scour his chest and belly and arms, his oxters and shoulders and finally his hands again until he stood shivering, panting, raw, the pitcher and bowl now as dry as one of Elf’s well-gnawed bones. What the devil is the matter with me? he asked of both the wild-eyed man in the mirror and the wolfhound perched on the cot behind him, even as the truth came crashing down on him.

  It was Claudia, of course. He wanted to be clean for her.

  But staring at his dripping reflection, he allowed he wanted it for himself, too.

  Chapter Twelve

  Seated at the breakfast table the following morning, Claudia finally admitted she couldn’t afford to delay the inevitable any longer. Heavy-eyed and muzzy-headed though she was, with a heart that was somewhere betwixt breaking and broken, it was time she put her plan for escape into motion.

  Nerves strung taut as wire, she looked across the saltglaze tea service to Luicas, blithely mopping up the last of the clotted cream with what she accounted to be his third scone. The sight of all that innocent, fresh-faced, unsuspecting youth caught at her heart, making her loathe herself almost as much as the trick she was about to play upon him. Certainly it would be kinder, gentler to wait upon her chance and then slip away from him on the crowded Edinburgh streets, but it also would be infinitely more dangerous. By the time she found her way back to the inn—and to the mews backing onto it—young Luicas could have raised the hue and cry, or worse yet, his master.

  Jack. She thought about their strained leave-taking the day before, and her heart gave a painful lurch. She’d spent the long, sleepless hours dividing dusk from dawn asking herself if she shouldn’t leave him a note at least, some explanation to ease his mind—and salve her conscience. In the end she’d decided against doing so. A clean break would be the best way, not to mention she hadn’t the faintest idea of what she’d say to him.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway below knelled. Claudia glanced up sharply, feeling each toll vibrate inside her breast. Half past ten—she dare not dally any longer. One eye on the boy, she dipped her little finger inside her cup, testing the temperature. The chocolate had been scalding when she’d poured it earlier but had cooled to tepid, which for her purpose made it ideal.

  Taking advantage of Luicas’s rapt attention on his breakfast, she lifted the cup and upended it over herself. “Ouf!”

  Predictably Luicas leapt to his feet, fumbling for the napkin that he’d forgotten was tucked beneath his chin. “Ye’re no burnt, are ye?”

  She had the fleeting thought to pretend that she was so that she might send him off in search of a physician or, barring such high drama, at least butter from the inn larder but decided against it. He might just as easily panic and go to fetch Jack from the prison and then where would she be?

  Far more prudent to stick to her original plan such as it was. Accordingly, she took up her napkin and dabbed at the muddy brown streaking the bodice of her cotton floral print. “Non, only clumsy and wet. But I cannot go out to the shops in such a state. I shall have to change my gown before we leave.”

  Relief registered on the boy’s face. He really was a very good boy, she thought, and looking into his earnest gaze, so like his sister’s, she felt her heart give another guilty little dip.

  He nodded and then resumed his seat, one eye on the untouched scone on her plate. “Are ye goin’ tae eat that? No that I’m still hungry, mind, but seems a shame tae waste it.”

  “Non, non you have it,” she assured him, scraping her chair back from the table to rise. Pauvre Luicas, little did he know that, if she succeeded, food would not be passing his lips again for several hours.

  Feeling as if her legs were of no more substance than the orange marmalade Luicas had smeared on his scones along with the cream, she somehow managed the trek from the breakfast room to the bedchamber—and the wardrobe within. A plain but handsome piece, the walnut armoire had the curious—and in this case, highly convenient—characteristic of resting flat on the floor sans pedestal or feet. Throwing the double doors open wide, she pretended to rummage through, an absurdity given she possessed only two other gowns, Evette’s sprigged muslin and the lavender silk, the latter far too formal for a shopping expedition.

  She’d worn the gown the first and, she supposed, last time for Mairi MacGregor’s wedding. That night in the byre Jack had come so very close to kissing her that his breath had brushed her lips, a caress in itself. The memory sent her heart slipping. To cover the pain she summoned a smile and prepared to play her part.

  “Luicas, chéri,” she called back, schooling her voice to sound sunny and light. “Will you come here, s’il te plait? I require a man’s opinion.”

  That she’d called him a man alone sufficed to have him vaulting from his seat and into the bedchamber, the napkin still tucked into his collar. Jerking it free, he joined her at the open wardrobe.

  She gestured within to the two gowns, hanging side by side on their wooden pegs. “Which shall it be?” she asked and, when he moved closer, stepped behind him.

  “I canna say as I ken much about females’ clothing but…” Sticking his head inside the opening, he squinted in concentration, sucking cream from his thumb. “Maybe if ye was tae take them out soooooo…”

  Calling on all her might, Claudia reached out with both hands and gave him a goodly shove. Taken unawares, he lurched forward. Heart racing, she slammed the doors closed behind him and turned the key.

  “Lemme out! Lemme out!” An assault of pounding sent the wardrobe swaying.

  She bit her lip, hating what she’d done, hating herself even more. Above the din she called, “Do not be alarmed, Luicas. There are several wormholes in the back. Last night while you slept I used the knife from supper to widen them. You will be warm, yes, but you will not suffocate, and in a few short hours your master will return to set you free.”

  “Tae kill me, ye mean,” he shouted back, then laid on another salvo of pounding.

  Reminded that Jack would indeed return, Claudia snatched up her cloak, the handkerchief-wrapped brooch and the tied parcel of her mother’s saved letters she’d brought along; the latter two articles she shoved into her battered valise and then started for the chamber door.

  One foot on the threshold, she couldn’t resist calling back, “Adieu, Luicas. Please do not be angry with me, for it is only that I must go home now.” Tears clogging her throat, she pulled the chamber door closed behind her, locked it against the boy’s muffled cries and then hastened to the stairs.

  The Royal Mile was thronged with midday traffic, both horse-drawn and pedestrian, as Jack made his way to the inn, Elf keeping to his side. With each step he took, his sense of foreboding grew keener as did the anxiety gnawing at his belly, the sixth sense that something was terri
bly, terribly wrong. More than the unfathomable tumult of emotions swirling inside him, he feared for Claudia. Why oh why hadn’t he bowed to the dictates of his inner wisdom and brought her with him to the tollbooth where at least he might have kept her safe? Why oh why had he left behind a boy to do a man’s job?

  Because ye’ve gone saft, Jacko, an inner voice, Callum’s voice, crowed.

  Soft though his head might be, it wasn’t nearly so soft as his heart. Whoever Claudia Valemont was, if indeed that were her true name, she’d gotten to him, penetrated the protective casing it had taken him decades, nay, a lifetime, to build, and the invasion had left him soft, spongy and as stupid as a snail denuded of its shell.

  True, he’d hated the prospect that taking her with him to the prison would in some way transport her back to her solitary night in the village tollbooth and before that to a Paris torn asunder by revolution. Owing to the carnage she’d witnessed there her fear of executioners, of les bourreaux as she called them, ran deep.

  And perhaps, just perhaps he hadn’t cared to drive home the point that he was, in fact, one of them.

  Choking down the fear that his selfishness might have cost Claudia, and cost her dearly, he quickened his step until he was skirting a run, his cloak flying behind him. A costermonger pushing along his cartload of roasted chestnuts wheeled out in front of him and then slowed to a near standstill or so it seemed to Jack. He barreled around it only to find his progress further stalled by a plump housewife waddling at snail’s pace, market basket in hand, and a loaded dray crawling by. Suddenly it seemed as if the entire city of Edinburgh had turned out to thwart him. Determined, he darted around the cart, so close he felt the back of his cloak brush against the beast’s hide. Ignoring the driver’s curses, Jack checked to make certain Elf was still with him. She was and so he sped ahead, turning off into a narrow wynd that he remembered as emptying out onto Blackfriars Street. Blinking owlishly, he stepped out into the sunlight. A half dozen or so long determined strides brought him to the inn steps. By the time he reached the entrance, taking the stone steps two at a time, sweat was running down his back.

  The inn’s common area was cool and quiet in the pale light of late morning, it being past breakfast but not yet time for dinner. A smattering of voices trickled out from the open parlor door. On his way to the stairs Jack hesitated and then backed up a step to peer inside. A trio of guests amused themselves within, two frock-coated older gentlemen puzzling over a chessboard and a somber matron in gray serge, bloodless lips moving as she read silently from the open bible in her lap, but no Claudia. Smoothing a hand over his wild hair, Jack turned to go, hoping to leave before anyone saw him.

  “Oh, my word, Master Campbell, we dinna expect to see you so soon,” Mistress Tweedie shrilled. The innkeeper’s wife stood just at his back, a tray with three very full glasses of sherry balanced on the flat of one broad hand. “But wherever is your bonny bride? Och, but I thought she said she was tae meet up wi’ ye? Dearie me, but ye’ve gone white as a sheet. Will you take a glass of sherry tae warm yourself, then?”

  Ignoring the three pairs of curious eyes at his back, he shook his head and forced himself to ask, “How long ago was it that she, ah, set out?”

  A frown splitting her brow, Mistress Tweedie took her time in considering the question until Jack was tempted to grab her by her plump shoulders and, tray and all, shake the answer from her. “Hmm, no long after ten, I expect,” she began at last, “for Lettie was just clearing the breakfast dishes. Herself came into the front hall—your dear wife, no Lettie—and asked me tae send ’round tae the stable for her horse.”

  Heart racing, Jack nodded. “I see,” he muttered and, God help him, he did.

  He stepped aside to make room for her but the cursed woman clung to him like a leech, setting down her tray to follow him out into the hallway.

  “I told the lass she ought not tae venture out on ’er own, that she’d do better tae bide here and wait for you. Och, but these modern young women are too headstrong by half. But it’s maybe that she’s only taken a wrong turn and gotten herself lost. Shall I call for a constable to be safe?”

  A constable! Jack had made it so far as the stair landing but at the mention of constables, he did an about-face. “Jesus, no!” Over the thundering in his ears he added more calmly, “What I mean to say is that she’s maybe returned a’ready and ye’ve just no seen her come in.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then promptly snapped it closed. But the look she sent him spoke volumes, confirming what he’d already surmised: there wasn’t much that went on within her inn’s four walls that Mistress Tweedie missed.

  Jack turned about and barreled up the stairs, down the narrow hallway to the door of the chamber he’d let. It was locked, he discovered upon trying the brass knob, and he fished beneath his cloak for the key. Fitting it into the lock, he was alarmed to discover his hands were shaking. Claudia, lass, what have you done to me? he asked himself for what must have been the hundredth time since he’d begged off the warder’s hospitality of wine and biscuits to return early. Despite his fumbling, the key hit home. He turned the knob, praying he might be mistaken, knowing in his heart he was not.

  Even before he stepped inside, he knew what he would find—absolute stillness, eerie, bone-rattling quiet. Gone were the familiar sounds he’d come to associate with Claudia: her soft humming, the tapping of her teacup against its saucer, the gaiety that seemed always to surround her. She brought so much life to a room that it was impossible not to take note of her presence—or mark her absence.

  Idiot that he was, he couldn’t keep from calling out, “Claudia. Claudia, I’m back.”

  He crossed the little sitting room, quiet as a kirkyard, and entered the bedchamber, suspiciously neat, hollow with emptiness.

  Halfway inside, he heard it. “Mphm, mphm, mphm!”

  The warbling seemed to be coming from within the wardrobe. The key stood in the lock. Even before he turned it and got the double doors open, he knew it wasn’t Claudia he would find within.

  Wilted as a plucked violet, Luicas fell into Jack’s arms. Catching him, Jack said, “Luicas, lad, what the devil…”

  Dashing a thin hand across his streaming brow, Luicas stepped back, tears bubbling forth from his reddened eyes. “I-I’m s-sorry, Master. Mistress C-Claudia, she…she…” His voice broke off.

  Fresh panic plowed Jack like a fist in the gut, but he forced himself to remain outwardly calm. “Easy, lad. Take a deep breath, and then tell me what has happened to Claudia.”

  The boy obliged, sucking down air as though it was still in limited supply. “Just before we was tae go out tae the shops, she spilled chocolate down the front o’ her frock. The flowered one wi’ the little rosebuds sewn along the neck.”

  Fear clawing at his entrails, Jack seized the boy by the shoulders and gave him a hearty shake. “I dinna care what it was she was wearin’, only get on with it.”

  “She bade me come o’er tae the wardrobe and help her decide which gown tae put on.” Daring a look up into Jack’s face, he admitted, “And so I did and turned my back for just the minute. She gave me a goodly shove—for a wee woman, she’s verra strong. The next thing I knew, I was inside, the doors slamming behind me. And then I heard the key turnin’ in the lock and mistress weepin’ and sayin’ ’twas past time she went home.”

  Home? Jack dragged a hand through his tangled hair, struggling to find some sense in it all. Back to France—that couldna be, not when she’d risked her life to leave.

  “Think Luicas, think. Did she say anything, anything at all, to hint at where she might be headed?”

  Luicas dragged his bottom lip through his teeth but at length he shook his head. “Nay, master. ‘Home,’ that was the whole of it.”

  And then it was as if the scales suddenly fell from Jack’s eyes and the cobwebs cleared from his brain. Inside his head Claudia’s own silky voice called him back to that very first day they’d met when she’d followed him outside
Alistair’s to launch her desperate plea. I must find my way to Linlithgow, she’d said. It lies just west of—

  Edinburgh, he finished for her now. Letting go of Luicas and rushing out the door, he couldn’t credit that he hadna reckoned it all ere now.

  Home. I am coming home.

  Crouched over the mare’s mane as a shield against the wind’s bite, Claudia silently repeated the words as if they were a magical incantation to ward off the sick, sinking feeling that she was making the very worst mistake of her life. Every patch of frost-parched ground she covered, every craggy slope she urged her horse to climb, carried her farther from, not closer to, all that she’d come to hold familiar and dear. Jack.

  A signpost she’d encountered at the crossroads a mile or so back had confirmed she was already more than halfway to her destination. Only seven more miles to the town of Linlithgow and from there she reckoned another few miles at most to Castle Aberdaire. Since sighting the signage, she’d allowed her horse to lapse into an easy trot. No need to exhaust either the mare or herself when her present pace would carry her to her destination before nightfall.

  Loosely constructed as her escape plan had been, everything was progressing amazingly well. Her heart had quailed when, upon descending the inn stairs that morning, she’d encountered the ever-vigilant Madame Tweedie in the hallway below. But when Claudia had said she was off to meet her husband, the good wife had beamed at her and insisted on sending a servant boy to the stable for her horse. Only after she was mounted with the reins firmly in hand had Claudia dared reveal her true destination, asking the ostler in a whisper if he would be so good as to direct her. The boy had regarded her with widened eyes, no doubt thinking Linlithgow to be a long jaunt for a woman alone, but in the end he’d pointed the way to the Royal Mile.