Markham family that way.
He was already working for the British Service then. He had access to levels of society most agents couldn’t touch. Sometimes that meant he bedded women who played spy games for France. Women with soft bodies and skilled little hands who asked about his father’s work at the War Ministry.
Copulation got to be a weary exercise when you didn’t like your partner. He’d lost his taste for casual encounters.
But Lord, he wanted Maggie. He wanted to run his hands over every inch of her skin. Wanted his mouth on her. He wanted to slurp her down, like she was milk and he was a starving cat.
The squelch and shuffle stopped. When he looked back, Maggie was bent over, panting, her hands braced on her knees.
She shook her head. “I can go farther.”
“Oh.” She straightened, wiping sweat off her upper lip. “Of course. Yes.”
He wasn’t worried about the donkeys. It takes dedication and ingenuity to kill a donkey, though Hawker was giving it a try. Any fool can founder a high-bred mare. A good horse will run her heart out and die under you.
That was Maggie. She’d keep on till she fell in her tracks.
She plodded onward, doing the last fifty yards, scrubbing her hand, open-fingered, on her sleeve. She just absolutely did not like being dirty. “Walking this road is different from traveling by coach. I had known this, of course, in my mind.” She sighed. “Now I know with my feet.”
“Nothing like experience.”
“There is no substitute for it, I believe. One can live too deeply in books. They are deceptive.”
“I’d agree with that.” What he wanted to do was start with her forehead and lick the frown off. Kiss her eyelids. Then he’d just wander down to her mouth. He could take an hour on her face, touring from place to place. She’d be wild for him before he got done with her ears.
Except he wasn’t going to do anything on that agenda. He was just going to imagine it. In detail.
Maggie touched from tree trunk to tree trunk on her way down the steep of the road to the water. “I have traveled this countryside all my life,” she said. “I will now carry it in the creases of my skin. This is a different way to know it, and more thorough.”
The stream looked clean enough. “The boy can water the beasts. You can cool off. Wash some, if you want.”
“I would like that.”
“I will go slightly upstream,” she said, “to avoid the donkeys. I am as fond of donkeys as anyone, but—I will be utterly candid—they attempt to bite me. It is the heat, I believe, that makes them irritable.”
“They always do that. Remarkably even temperament in those animals.”
“Doubtless. But I would argue that discomfort brings out in them a special avidity for human flesh. Hercules was sent to steal the mares of Diomedes that ate human flesh. Did you know that?”
“I’ll keep it in mind if anyone tries to sell me one.”
She knelt by the water. The steam was shallow and only a few feet wide, running over flat rocks, cooling the air. Gracefully, she reached up and stripped her fichu off her shoulders, unwinding it from her in a circle, uncovering white, white skin. The sun percolated through the trees to land in coin shapes all over her. She was lit up in speckled drops that slid over her neck and across the bones of her shoulders. They played peekaboo up and down the mounds of her tits. A man without his splendid self-control would have noticed she showed right down to the nipple when she leaned over.
She wet the end of the fichu in the stream and washed her face. Hawker arrived, gave one absolutely casual glance in their direction, and took the animals way off downstream to drink.
“The road’ll be dry this afternoon. We’ll have easier going.” Doyle chose a flat gray boulder and settled down to see what else Maggie would do. Still lots of clothing on this woman.
He’d pulled his jacket off an hour ago and slung it over Dulce’s back. He was walking around with his shirt open halfway down his chest. That was a fine poetical look for some men. Not him. He had too much unpoetic muscle. He was hairy, too. Even when he wasn’t wearing his scar, there was nothing handsome about him. His father called him “that hairy bog jumper.” They didn’t get along, he and his father.
No jacket meant he wasn’t carrying anything but the six-inch sticker in his waistcoat and a throwing knife in his boot. He felt a little underdressed. But he had a long view down the road. It was quiet. Only a few frogs spoke up, creaking back in the woods. He’d hear horses before they topped the rise. He’d have time to get Maggie into cover behind those bushes over there.
She made breathy sighing sounds when she washed. Damn, but that was enticing. A man imagined her sounding like that while he did inventive things.
He was going to stop imagining.
She dribbled water here and there, which was something he could watch her do indefinitely. After a while, she sat back on her heels, pressing wet cloth to the back of her neck, and looked at him straight. Assessing. Deciding. “I am not certain where we stand. Am I your prisoner?”
“God, no.” He got it out fast. He even managed to sound offended. “Walk off if you want to.” He waved at the road uphill. “Go ahead. I’m not stopping you.”
“I had received a different impression, somehow.” But she didn’t get up to leave. They’d got past the point where he had to chase her down and tackle her. Obviously his sterling character was winning her trust.
He let himself sound petulant. “I thought I was doing you a favor, taking you with me. Those Jacobins from Paris are ahead somewhere. I figured you didn’t want to meet them alone.”
She mulled that over a while. “I wish to avoid them.”
“I don’t like to deal with officials myself. Not these days. Not the bloodthirsty crew that’s ruling Paris.”
She held the wet cloth to her face. When she lowered it, her eyes were sober. “I do not trust them to deal fairly with one of de Fleurignac’s servants. Especially one who is a foreigner.” The words were lies. The fear underneath was real. “Thank you for hiding me from them.”
“I was getting out of sight myself. You just got the benefit of it. You have somewhere to go?”
“I have friends. Not so far. I will go to them.”
He scratched his chin. It wasn’t easy to keep the right sort of stubble on his chin. It took careful shaving to look this unkempt. “What was in my mind . . . I thought I’d keep an eye on you, as long as we’re walking in the same direction. There’s bad men on the roads. Worse than me.”
“It is possible,” she agreed, dryly.
“In these towns, in every direction, they’ve heard about the burning in Voisemont. Everybody you pass is going to be watching for aristos escaped from the chateau. You won’t look like an aristo if you’re with me.” He gestured, taking in Guillaume LeBreton in all his glory. “Nobody would. And nobody bothers a woman traveling with a man my size.”
A damselfly went flitting over the tall weeds by the water, blue as a sapphire, bright as a jewel flying. Maggie knelt motionless on the moss by the side of the stream, watching it hover. After a while, she said, “I do not see why you would—”
“Fifty livres.”
“What?”
“Fifty livres and I see you to your friend’s house. To the doorstep.” Nothing like asking for money to make a man look honest. Nobody trusted altruism. He stood up, doing it slowly, making sure he looked harmless, and went over to watch water running over the rocks. The damselfly got bored and flew away.
“I don’t have fifty livres with me.” A flicker of amusement crossed her face. “I don’t have fifty sous.”
“Then I’ll have to trust you for the money, won’t I?”
Ah, but she was tempted. One push, and she’d do it. He got down next to her on his haunches. Looked her in the eye. “You’ll do some trusting of your own. You’re afraid of me.”
