The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [124]
“Damn you, I do not mean to charm you! I speak three languages fluently!”
“Well, then, what is your purpose?” She turned as she spoke and stared up at a gaunt, very tall man, dark-haired, eyes blacker than Douglas’s, garbed in gentleman’s morning wear. She knew suddenly that this was Georges Cadoudal. Oh dear, this man’s accent was quite legitimate.
“My purpose? Well, I will tell you. I have a very small and very deadly pistol here in my right hand and it is pointed at your breast. I suggest, madame, that you come with me, and keep that charming smile on your face. Consider me your lover and we shall deal together famously, eh? Let’s go.”
Alexandra saw the intent in his eyes, the cold hardness, the determination. “Je ne vais pas!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. She smashed The Mysterious Count in his face, hoping she’d at least broken his long nose. Then when he raised his arm to strike her, she screamed, “Merde! Merde! Je vaisà Paris demain avec mon mari! Aidez-moi!”
He struck her against the side of her head, cursing all the while, whilst the patrons of Hookams stared in frozen shock.
“James, help! Aidez-moi!”
“Damn you,” Georges Cadoudal hissed in her face, and then in the next instant, he was gone. James was at her side, shocked to his toes, knowing that he’d failed the mistress, but it had been so unexpected, the attack by the unknown villain.
“Are you all right, my lady? Oh dear, please tell me you’re all right.”
Alexandra shook her head to clear it. The blow had made her eyes blur and cross. “Yes, I’m all right.” Then she looked at the novel she was holding and straightened out its ruffled pages. “I coshed him in the nose, James. Did you hear my French?”
“Merde, my lady?”
This time it was Heatherington, the man Douglas had told her would toss up a woman’s skirts even before he knew her name, and he was smiling down at her, not the sardonic smile of a practiced roué, but a genuine smile. Oddly, there was a good deal of warmth in that smile. “Ah yes, I heard your magnificent French. Who is the poor soul who dared to agitate you?”
“He is gone,” Alexandra said. She looked as proud as a little peahen. “My French scared him off.”
Heatherington gave her a long look, then he laughed, a sound that was rusty because he hadn’t laughed, really laughed in a very long time. It didn’t go with the image he so carefully cultivated for himself. He laughed louder, shaking his head. “Merde,” he said. “Merde,” he said again, then turned away and left the bookstore.
Alexandra stared after him for a moment, then paid for her novel, ignoring all the whispering ladies and gentlemen staring at her. James walked very close to her until he handed her up into the carriage. They were at the Sherbrooke town house in twenty minutes. As James walked up the front steps just behind her, she stopped and said urgently, her fingers plucking at his coat sleeve, “Please, James, I don’t wish His Lordship to know about the small, ah, contretemps, all right? It was nothing, nothing at all. The man was doubtless confused as to who I was, but nothing more.”
James wasn’t at all certain she was right. He was worried and rightfully so, for the first person he saw in the entrance hall was His Lordship and he looked fit to kill. In fact, he looked filled with anticipation to kill.
James had never before heard a man roar, but he did now. His Lordship straightened to his full height, and yelled at the top of his lungs at his wife who only came to his shoulder, “Where the hell did you go? How dare you disobey me! My God, Alexandra, you’ve pushed me too far this time! Bloody hell, it is too much, much too much!”
James retreated,