The Return of the Prodigal. Кейси Майклс

looked so young and beautiful, and so very frightened as the Call to Arms rang throughout the city. But Brede would have ordered both her and his sister out of Brussels, to somewhere safe. He shouldn’t worry about her. Besides, Fanny always landed on her feet.

      “I do have other duties, yes, but they’ll still be patiently waiting for me when I turn to them. Come now, exercise that leg with a stroll around the gardens. You must be stiff from sitting and pouting for so long.”

      He shoved thoughts of his sister to the back of his brain, where they rested comfortably, as he really didn’t wish to be bothered with anything even resembling serious thought. As Lisette said, the day was beautiful. Too beautiful for deep thoughts. “You’re attempting to goad me into getting better, aren’t you? You’ve grown tired of being my faithful nurse.”

      “Weary unto death, yes. And is it working? My goading?” she asked, smiling, her clear blue eyes twinkling mischievously as she slipped her arm through his.

      “I’m not dead, so I suppose so.”

      They walked in silence for a good ten minutes before Rian felt himself beginning to flag, his thigh aching, and they sat down side-by-side on a stone bench in the shade.

      “So you’ll ask me no questions?”

      “Questions?” He blinked several times, attempting to marshal his thoughts. Did he have questions? Of course he did. Something about this house? The man who owned this house? Was that it? Damn, he really should care more. Shouldn’t he? “No. No questions. Yes. One question. Will you come to me again tonight?”

      “If you want me, yes,” Lisette said, boldly sliding her hand onto his sore thigh, the warmth of her palm bringing him a strange comfort. “I feel safe when I’m with you, Rian Becket.”

      “Safe? Of course you’re safe. I’m weak as a kitten, and couldn’t possibly harm you. And what is there to fear here, Lisette? Flowers, trees, birdsong. Good food and soft beds—you in my bed. We could be in Heaven, Lisette, in Eden. I float through days and weeks of Paradise.”

      Or I’m in Limbo, he added silently, fighting the comfortable fog that seemed to roll stealthily into his mind every afternoon, eventually sending him back to his bed. He’d been better, yesterday. Better today. But perhaps he’d done too much, been thinking too much? Oh, look, a butterfly….

      “My employer,” Lisette told him quietly, lowering her gaze to her shoe tops. “He returns in less than a week. I know he was a friend to my parents, and I thank him for his kindness in taking me into this place during a time of war, hiding me. I am, after all, considered to be English. But lately he…he looks at me. He says things. That there is no need for me to insist on being a servant, earning my own keep. He suggests…things. I will leave here before he returns this time, and I wish you gone by then as well. The others have gone, and yet you’re still here. My…my employer may have grown weary of being your benefactor, Rian Becket, and when I am gone there will be no one to care for you. If he shows you the door, where will you go, what will you do?”

      Rian turned on the bench, looking at Lisette just as she quickly wiped a single tear from her cheek. The rapid turn made his head spin, and he fought to refocus his eyes and his thoughts. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Lisette he was weak as a kitten, and still obviously unable to spend a full day out of his bed. A walk in the gardens had sapped all of his strength, all of his will. “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. Tell…tell me more about this man.”

      Lisette shook her head, let the curtain of silky sunlight hide her face as she looked down at the hands now demurely clasped in her lap. “What else is there to know?”

      “His name, I suppose, for starters. How strange. Why have I never asked?” Rian placed his hand over hers, feeling the ice in her fingertips. Damn. He needed to concentrate, but he could feel himself becoming more detached from their conversation. As if nothing mattered, nothing in this world. Not him, not Lisette. Nothing but this pleasant sense of floating above all cares, all worries.

      She pushed her hair behind her ear as she turned to look him full in the eyes. “He is the Comte Neuveville Beltane. Or at least he became the Comte once his family died in the Terror. The title, it comes and it goes, depending on who reigns in Paris. For now, it is back. That’s what he says.”

      Rian scrubbed at his face, hard, to wake himself, rouse himself. “What he says, Lisette?”

      Once again, Lisette averted her face. “Maman would joke about it, but she wouldn’t smile. She said the Comte came into his title the only way he knew how. Then my papa would warn her to be quiet, that necks had been chopped for less. I don’t know, Rian. That was three years ago, perhaps four now. Time is lost here.” She sighed, shrugged her shoulders in a purely Gallic way. “I am lost here, so I will go, before the Comte returns. I have made plans. I only wish I had somewhere to go. And I worry about leaving you here, with only the slovenly fools in the kitchens to care for you.”

      Rian slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulled her close against his chest. “Lisette, you’re trembling. You’re really afraid, aren’t you?”

      She pushed herself free of him and got to her feet, her cheeks pale. “I am not afraid! I refuse to be afraid. But I must be sensible. I am no longer a little girl. I am nearly twenty years of age now, and the Comte is a man. Men expect rewards for their generosity. I’m not foolish, I know what he means when he says I do not need to be a servant. But if I give my body, it will be my choice, not my only option.”

      Rian felt humbled. “You…you have given your body to me, Lisette.”

      “Because I am a fool, yes. Because you are so sad. Because I wanted to wake you, make you want life. But I can’t stay here any longer, Rian Becket. Not even for you.”

      “I wouldn’t ask that of you,” he told her, wearily getting to his feet. “It’s so easy to stay here, Lisette. But you’re right. It’s time for me to go, too. I’ve played the languishing miss much too long as it is. I should go home, much as I don’t want to go there.”

      “But why wouldn’t you want to rush to them, Rian? You have pen and paper, yet you refuse to write to them. I could have written to them for you. All I would have needed was to know how to address the letter, yes? You are very selfish, Rian Becket. Your family has to believe you dead, lost to them. Their pain must be terrible. How they would rejoice to see you again.”

      “Yes, I know. I’ve always planned to go home, in time. And they’ll welcome me. And they’ll pity me. Oh, they’ll try to hide it, but I’ll see it in their eyes. I’m not yet ready to see that, Lisette. I need more time, time to grow stronger.”

      “Merde. Never have I heard such nonsense.”

      Rian chuckled low in his throat. “Merde, Lisette? And where did you learn such a word? Surely not from your teacher father, or your good mother.”

      He watched as her hands drew up into tight fists, and then relaxed as a smile widened her generous mouth. “I live with the other servants. I have heard the word said, and much more. At least I am not a puling infant, hiding, bemoaning the terrible things the fates have done to me. I survive, Rian. You merely exist.”

      His head had begun to ache. First the floating, and then the headache. Go home? He wasn’t ready for that, not yet. “Ah, and there is the Lisette I know. Always scolding, always pushing. Do you long to hit me? Beat some sense into me?”

      “No. I want you to live, Rian Becket. I fought hard to keep you alive, and now I want you to live. The Comte? I think he only keeps what he believes he can use. That is why I made sure to send away the other soldiers when you English marched through the area. He will be angry to learn that, I’m sure. I would have sent you, if you would not have died to leave your bed. But now you must go, Rian. We must both go. I, because I know what the Comte wants from me. You, because I do not know what he wants from you. Do you understand now?”

      Rian