Chapter 11

La Comtesse

Luc watched the color flood back into her cheeks, which had gone pale as parchment, and he nearly marched over to his cousin and strangled him. When Cam last sent word to the Victory, he said that she now knew his true identity. Unwisely, Luc had believed him.

A girl with the tall, dark appearance of Reiner rushed to her. “Arabella!”

Arabella.

“Bella, are you ill?”

“No,” he barely heard her say. “No, I am well.” Her chin ticked up as she met his gaze, but the cornflowers swam with confusion.

“Ah, Luc!” Reiner clasped his hand. “Bedwyr promised you were to come, but I never believe a thing he says.”

“I would be well advised to follow your example.” He looked over Reiner’s shoulder to her.

“My friend,” Reiner said, turning to the others. “Allow me to make you acquainted with your guests, my sister and her ladies-in-waiting.”

The women came forward. He was trapped, acting the gallant host to the party while the single person who most deserved his attention stole away down the terrace steps to the garden. No one seemed to notice. She still wore the plain governess’s gown. It seemed that neither Cam nor she had told Reiner or anybody else of the events at Saint-Nazaire.

He would remedy that swiftly. But not before he spoke with her alone.

“Your lordship,” one of the ladies said, “will you take tea?”

“I should think he might wish something a bit stronger. Don’t you, Rallis?” Cam said with a lifted brow.

“Wine it is, then,” Reiner said.

Luc bowed to the ladies, sent his cousin a silent command, and followed the prince inside. With a wave he dismissed the footman and turned to his cousin.

“Damn you, Cam.”

Bedwyr leaned against the sideboard negligently. “I don’t suppose you recall damning me when you were shedding your life’s force in the sand. Really, Lucien, you are repeating yourself tiresomely.”

“You deserve every moment of damnation you are wished.”

“Probably, but that is hardly to the point. When did it become my responsibility to negotiate your tortured love affairs for you?”

“Goddammit, Cam. Have you no conscience?”

Reiner poured a glass of burgundy. “The two of you still argue like you did when you were eighteen.”

“Then, he was merely a careless hedonist. Now he is a liar and a manipulator. Why did you lead me to believe you had told her?”

“Tell me, Lucien,” Cam said as though Luc had not spoken, “during your convalescence did you by chance flirt with trading in the old blindness for the new? Or are you simply doubly blind now?” Cam gestured with his glass to the terrace doors. “But I think I have my answer already.”

Reiner pushed a glass of wine into Luc’s hand. “Drink this, my friend. It seems you need it.”

Luc set down the glass. “Did he tell you?”

“That I was to ensure the safety of the stunning governess but not step within ten yards of her? Yes. He failed to mention it had anything to do with you, though.”

“It was not my news to share, of course.” Cam flicked an imaginary speck of lint off his coat sleeve. Finally he met Luc’s gaze squarely. “From the beginning. As you wished.”

Cam was right. Luc knew he should have told her the truth the moment she first asked his name. He could have told her at any moment since then. He hadn’t because in hiding his identity he imagined he would be able to remain aloof from her.

But Cam had known. Somehow the rakehell swiftly understood what he had indeed been too blind to see.

He started toward the door.

“Now, wait here a moment, Luc,” Reiner said to his back. “Have you installed your mistress in this house as my sister’s governess?”

“She is not my mistress.” He yanked open the door. “She is my comtesse.”

ARABELLA WENT BLINDLY through the garden, no tears in her eyes but a cyclone of relief and joy and pure, titanic anger crowding her senses as she hurried along the hedgerow toward the wooded paths.

He was alive.

She needed a moment alone to think, to collect her thoughts, to understand.

To revel.

He was alive. Alive and well and able to smile and bow handsomely to the princess’s silly waiting ladies.

Alive.

Alive enough to have told her that he had not in fact died before she discovered it in this manner.

For weeks she had shed tears for him. Weeks. While he had lied to her. For what reason, she could not fathom. Had he thought that if she knew the truth she would try to entrap him into marriage? But she had held him off more than once. She had objected until the very last moment. He had entrapped her.

The hedgerow ended in a long stone wall that stretched alongside a field of rows of pruned grape vines. She halted. Her steps had not taken her to the woods. She was lost. But certainly she had not walked so far to stray from the estate. His estate. The comte’s estate.

He was alive. And he was a titled nobleman. The heir to a dukedom.

She should have known. Men had lied to her before.

Never like this. Of course.

Her breaths came shallow. She reached out a hand, grabbed the wall and held tight to a rock while incomprehensible reality settled upon her. Then she continued walking until she came to a building. Low-roofed, long, and dark, she recognized it at once as a wine press. No one was about. The harvest was over, the sun low, and the building and naked vines cast long shadows across the grass.

She leaned up against the stone wall and closed her eyes. She would return and confront him and try not to hurl herself into his arms and breathe him in while she told him exactly what she thought of how he had treated her.

Perhaps it had all been a game to him. And his cousin. Lord Bedwyr, must have been part of it. But the men who attacked him, and his wound, had not been make-believe.

Why had he done it?

She pushed away from the wall and turned in the direction she had come.

She heard the dogs barking first, then hoofbeats. Rounding a corner of the high stone wall that bordered the nearest field, four of them scampered around her, tongues lolling, bearing friendly welcome.

A whistle cut the air and the beasts leaped away from her and back across the field.

He cantered toward her upon a great black horse like a man out of her dreams. He wore a dark green coat of superb cut and a black duster, buckskins that stretched over his thighs to extraordinary advantage, and a tall-crowned hat. Even with the kerchief and scar, he looked like a lord.

She did not wish to hide. That her hands shook and her throat closed should not matter. But as he came down from the horse, with the dogs cavorting about his boots, she drank in the sight of him.

“Good day, madam.” He came toward her.

She backed up. “Should you be riding?”

“Probably not. But according to the footman, who had it from the gardener, you set off in this direction at quite a pace and I could not imagine how I was to find you before dusk if I made the attempt on foot. The grounds are extensive.” He smiled ever so slightly. “So if my wound should open from the ride and I die from it, rest assured it will be your fault.”

“How could you—” Her voice failed. He stood there so tall and handsome, yet lighter of flesh than before and somewhat taut about the mouth. She wished he was in vile pain and prayed that he was not. “You are cruel.”

“Ah. We come directly to the point. No fond reunion kisses first.” He sighed. “I should have expected it after the shattered teacup, yet I held out hope.”