If You Deceive

Chapter Seventeen

When Ethan tossed the core away, she looked as though she would cry, and for some reason he almost felt guilty. He gentled his tone. "Come with me, Madeleine. I promise your apple will be a worthy sacrifice."

Even now, dressed as she was, she seemed so out of place in La Marais. She was tired, but her hair shone in the street fires, and her eyes were bright, not like the sunken eyes of the denizens all around them. She appeared so fragile, yet she had no reaction to the shots fired at regular intervals not more than a couple of blocks away in any direction.

"I still have to go home to let my friends know I didn't get hurt," she said. "They'll be worried."

"So you plan to wade into a dangerous area in order to inform your friends that you're safe? That's ridiculous."

"It's notdangerous ," she scoffed.

The mere idea of her down here at night was insufferable. "Do you no' hear the guns going off?"

She gave him a look that said he was daft. "Well, it's not as though they're aimed atme . If you're afraid, then stay here until I return."

Little witch. "I'm no'afraid —"

"Then you won't mind waiting here. You can't tell me Corrine and Bea were worried and then expect me to ignore their worry."

At another time, he might have been impressed with her loyalty and concern for her friends. Now, it only irritated him. "If you think I'm letting you go down there alone, you're mad."

She put her hand on her hip. "And what will you do about it?"

He lunged forward, seizing her elbow, and began dragging her back up the hill.

"MacCarrick, Ilive here. I only want five minutes." She cursed him in French. "You can't order me about, Scot!" Her hard little boots connected with his shins.

He grated, "Damn it, Madeleine, we'll send them a message from the hotel."

"No one will deliver a message to La Marais after sunset!"

"They will if I pay them enough." He considered throwing her over his shoulder, but he risked opening his stitches. When she still resisted, he said, "We'll send them food as well, then. Would that sway you?"

She eased her scuffling. "Howmuch food?"

"I doona bloody care. As much as you like."

She got a gleam in her eye that he thought he'd soon be growing familiar with. "I will hold you to—"

A woman cried out from just behind him. Ethan shoved Madeleine back as he twisted around. In a murky alley, a prostitute was pressed up against a wall, studying her nails and feigning moans as one man took her from behind. Another man awaited his turn.

When Ethan turned to Madeleine, she shrugged at the sight of people having intercourse just feet from the two of them, with the same indifference she'd demonstrated the first night he'd met her.

He couldn't imagine all the things her young eyes had witnessed.

Stitches be damned. "I doona want you here," he said simply, about to sling her over his shoulder, but the waiting man strode forward from the shadows and addressed them in a strange tongue.Argot , Ethan thought, the French cant of criminals. The man pointed to Madeleine with raised eyebrows.

She gave a bitter laugh and muttered, "He wants to know if you've finished with me."

A haze fell over Ethan's vision. He dimly heard her answering retort, speaking argot herself. The bastard thought Madeleine was a whore, thought to use her in a filthy alley….

Ethan yanked her behind him as he pulled his gun. The man took one look at Ethan's expression and drew his own pistol. Too late. Ethan had already drawn, cocked, and aimed.

Madeleine glanced out from behind his back, then touched his shoulder. "Don't, MacCarrick." Her voice was urgent. "Allons-y. Let's go. I'm ready to go with you now."

"Why should I no' kill him?"

"Because his gang will come after me and my friends. You didn't want me here, and now I want to go with you. Please, Scot…."

At length, he backed them away, keeping his gun raised and the man in sight until they'd turned the corner. He finally stowed his gun, wincing in pain. His wound had started to throb.

"Do you always carry a pistol?" At his brusque nod, she said, "Why?"

So when a criminal mistakes my woman for a whore, I can kill him.He shook himself, trying to throw off the surge of protectiveness that welled within him.His woman? She was a means to an end.

She tilted her head at him. "I don't understand why you were afraid of gunfire when youhave a gun—and obviously know how to use it. In any case, I wouldn't have let anything happen to you." She frowned. "Well, probably not. Unless it inconvenienced me to step in or I had something better—"

"I wasno' bloody afraid," he grated again.I suspect I'm going to throttle her before all this is done. "Damn it, just come along…."

When they arrived at his hotel, the brasserie downstairs was still open, but Ethan didn't want to take her in there. He didn't care if people stared at his face—he was used to it—but he didn't want her analyzing him, discerning his reaction.

"We'll eat in my room," he said, clasping her hand and leading her to the stairs.

Instead of protesting vehemently, she gazed up at his scar. "It really bothers you, doesn't it?" No furtive glances for her.

He narrowed his eyes. "Wouldn't it you?"

She shrugged, and they ascended in silence to his floor. Inside his room, she whistled and turned in a circle. "Pricey. Nothing but the best, then?"

He rang for a waiter. "Why no'?" he said, carefully shrugging from his jacket.

She'd just returned from surveying the balcony's view when a liveried waiter arrived to take a bill of fare. The man handed the single menu to him to order, but Ethan waved him to Madeleine.

She accepted it with a regal inclination of her head, sitting at the room's polished dining table. "Do you speak French?" she asked Ethan as she skimmed the offerings.

"Nary a word," he lied. "Only Gaelic and English."

"Lobster," she immediately told the man in French, casting Ethan a furtive glance. He gave her a blank look in return. She amended her order to six lobster entrees with accompaniments—soups, cheeses, pastries, fruits, salad.

"And if you box up half of the order and have the porter deliver it to an address in La Marais, my…husband will add a forty percent gratuity."

"La Marais?" the waiter said, choking on the words.

She sighed. "Seventy percent."

While Madeleine scribbled the address on the bill of fare, Ethan told the waiter, "Bring up champagne while we wait." To Madeleine, he said, "Feel free to choose the vintage, lass."

In French, she ordered, "Whatever's most dear."

With a bow, the man departed. When he returned directly with the champagne, poured, then left once more, Madeleine seemed content to drink and explore the room.

Ethan sank back into a plush armchair, content to watch her opening drawers, investigating closets, even rooting through his bag.Sionnach , he thought. She again reminded him of a fox, so wary, so sly.

She touched all the fabrics in the room, brushing her fingertips lovingly over the counterpane, even over his trousers in the closet press, seeming unaware of what she was doing. He, however, was quite aware and wanted her to run her fingers over those trousers like that when he was in them. She effortlessly made him randy as hell.

When she ambled into the bathroom, he leaned forward to keep her in view. She eyed the plunge tub, which was big enough to swim in. "Unlimited running water?" she asked, coveting it with her eyes.

"Aye. You're welcome to it."

He thought he heard her mutter, "You mean, you'll let meavail myself ."

By the time the food arrived a short while later, she was visibly tipsy, which wasn't surprising considering how thin she was. The sizable table proved too small for all the fare, so she had the server spread out the plates on the room's thick Brussels rug for a picnic.

Once the man left, she sat on the floor, with the dishes all around her. Ethan shrugged and eased down with her, careful with his injury.

"Casual as ever," she remarked.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, reaching for a lobster dish, but she changed her grip on her fork to a dagger hold.

He raised his palms in surrender, his gaze flickering over her small frame as he said, "You obviously need it more than I do."

She couldn't seem to decide if that had been a cutting comment or a statement of fact. He couldn't either. "Tell me what you meant," he said.

"You acted so familiar with me that night in the carriage."

"Aye, it happens when two people have intercourse."

She glared at that. "No, you acted as if we'd been together for years—just a night among many between us."

Sometimes it felt that way….

"Here. I'll let you have this to eat," she said, solemnly handing him agarnish . Then she took her first forkful, rolling her eyes with pleasure.

Though he would have thought she'd inhale her food, she savored each bite as if it would be her last. She had a sensual, tactile way of eating that was…stirring. When she ate juicy strawberries and clotted cream, he ran his hand over his mouth. When she licked the cream from her fingers, he uncomfortably shifted the way he sat. Any male could easily imagine her actions in a different light. Finally, he could take no more.

"Enough," he said as he levered himself to his feet. "You're going to make yourself sick." He clasped her hand to help her up.

She reluctantly let him. "But I haven't eaten more than a regular meal."

"Which is still much more than you're accustomed to right now."

When he led her, grumbling, to a seat at the empty dining table, she stared over her shoulder at the food. He again experienced that tightness in his chest, the same he'd felt when she'd been about to cry over her apple.

"Lass, there's more where that came from. You doona have to behave like it's your last meal."

She laughed without humor. "Spoken like a man who's never missed one."