A Proposition For The Comte. Sophia James

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СКАЧАТЬ just another side effect of the life he had lived.

       ‘Dieu, aidez-moi.’

      He remembered he’d sworn in French last night, too, a mistake that came from blood loss and dizziness. He seldom made such errors and cursed anew, the shifting exhaustion he’d felt for months lessening his usual caution.

      Who the hell could have known that he was here in London on the sort of business that usually stayed secret and unheralded? What had happened after he had left the boarding house on Brompton Place?

      He could remember very little of the previous night’s attack, save for speaking to Lady Addington in a bedchamber when he’d been cleaned up and the doctor had left. The swelling in his side was greater this morning, the tight heat releasing into a throbbing ache. There were slight memories of sleet and cold and the sound of a carriage coming on as he fell, but that was about the most of it.

      Would Lady Addington talk to the London law-keepers and give them his description? Would there be repercussions that might follow? He had no family here save for his younger sister and his two ageing aunts. A further worry that, for their safety was paramount in everything he did.

      Violet Addington’s freckles had been astonishing and her colouring had held the sort of vivid glowing richness that he could never before remember seeing and now could not forget.

      She’d worn a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand, but there had been no sign of a husband save for the portrait he’d caught sight of at the bottom of the stairs as he had left, the night light in the hall falling across the face of a man who was imposing and elegant. Her countenance was drawn beside his, a younger, more uncertain version of the woman she’d become.

      Rising from the water, he took a towel from the rack and tied it about his waist, catching his reflection in the full-length mirror. He rarely looked at himself these days, but tonight he did. Tonight the scar on his chin was raised and red in the light and the new wound above his ear ate into the black of his hair. His chest was bandaged, hiding ruin’s pathway across the skin, though the swollen bruising on his arm was visible.

      His life was reflected in the hardness of his eyes and in the deep lines that ran down each side of his face. Every year he’d worked for the Ministère de la Guerre had placed new scars upon him. The sabre cuts across his back, the many small knife wounds that ran over his hands and his lower arms, the missing half-finger resulting from the debacle with Les Chevaliers and his betrayal by Celeste Fournier-Shayborne.

      He knew that the Addington servants must have seen such ruination upon him and wondered just what they might have relayed to their mistress. Or to a master?

      The cross on plaited leather at his neck caught his attention next. Veronique. He’d taken it from her body after he’d pulled her out of the Seine and he’d never removed it. The remnants of lost chances and the aching brokenness of love. The beginning of his indifference, too.

      A clean shirt hid most of the damage as he pulled it on, a pair of breeches following and then his boots. This double game of intelligence was taking his life piece by piece.

      At any moment chaos could consume him. He felt it coming as a bleakness he could not control and then as a shaking that numbed all he knew to be good.

      The images of Paris were there, too, of course, Henri Clarke’s ministère and its constant and brutal violence. There was softness in small snatches at brothels and taverns filled with music, connections of the flesh that held only darkness and brevity.

      Once he had been a good man. He’d believed in justice and equality and fairness. Once he had slumbered from dusk to dawn barely moving, his dreams quiet, graceful things without any of the monsters that now came calling as soon as he shut his eyes.

      In the town house of Lady Addington he had slept the best he had in months. He could barely believe it when the clock in the corridor outside had struck out the hour of six and he had woken.

      Three hours of straight and uninterrupted slumber. It was a record.

      He knew he had to go back into society to complete his mission here, but she would recognise him now, would know his face. Would she be wise enough to keep quiet about their meeting in the middle of a cold London night? He didn’t want her to be implicated. He didn’t want her to be pulled into something he knew could hurt her.

      But if she saw him unbidden? What might happen then? What if her servants talked? Or the driver of the Addington conveyance? Or the doctor with his clumsy hands? Even the plump housekeeper had watched him in a way that made him wonder.

      Hell. He never took these risks at home, never walked through the streets of Paris compromised by mistake. He was getting old and soft, that was the trouble. Thirty-four years were upon him already and, he wondered, would he even manage thirty-five?

      The wound at his side pulled as he turned too fast and he placed his arm hard against the pain, containing it and keeping it in. He’d need to lay low for a week at least to gather strength, but after that he meant to find those who had ordered his demise. Find them and deal with them. He had his leads and his hunches in the art of intelligence had always served him well.

      After his father came to England, they would never return to France. There would be no more favours, no more final turn of the dice for a regime he’d long since stopped believing in. He would live on his estate in the ordered greenness of Sussex.

      Compton Park.

      The remodelling had been finished for a good ten months now and yet he had barely spent a night there. He wanted that to change. He needed a base so that all the parts of him that were compromised did not spin out, never to be regathered again. Lost in artifice and trickery.

      He needed light.

      That thought had him swearing because the only woman he had ever met with a distinct aura of brightness was Lady Addington and she was probably rueing her decision to pick him up off the freezing streets to take him home.

      Such rumination made him feel dizzy and he sat with relief on the leather chair in his dressing room, a drink in hand and trying to regain a balance that could allow his breath to soften.

      He could do nothing yet. He needed to get stronger, needed the weakness that held him captive to dissipate and to lessen. Wisdom came with the knowing of when to wait and when to strike and at this moment he understood that his physical means were restricted.

      Drawing in, he made himself relax, made himself reach for the remembered warmth of a Parisian summer, the music in the streets of Montmartre, the pastries in the small bakeries off St Germaine. The lazy flow of the Seine was there, too, in his mind’s eye, wending its easy way through the city, as were the ancient mellow buildings of the Marais with its hidden spaces and green trees. The history of life wound about his uncertainty, knitting resolve and purpose together.

      His thumb rubbed across the engraving on his ring which evoked the traditions of an ancient and powerful family. Such rituals heartened him and rebuilt the shaken foundations of his hurt.

       Lord, how many are my foes.

       How many rise up against me...

      David’s Prayer of Deliverance had helped him many times and he liked the peace of it. Finishing the entreaty and the last of his drink he leaned back against leather and closed his eyes. To rest, not to sleep. He’d long since given up even the hope of СКАЧАТЬ