"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-" How many times had I said those words?

"It's nothing. It's just that I'm such a stupid, ugly, old sow." She burst into tears. "I can't do anything right anymore."

I shuttled her toward the door, ignoring her tears and reassuring her of her worth. "You're the apple of the marquis's eye. It's not what you look like. He doesn't care what you've done or what you can't do. It's who you are that's important, regardless of everything else."

"It's the child that's important, regardless of everything else. Regardless, even, of me." The look she gave me was fraught with resignation. And pity. As if I must be provincial, indeed, if I did not realize the truth of her words. "As long as I have a boy child, then all will be right."

Chapter 20.

The Count of Montreau Chateau of Eronville

The province of Orleanais, France

The two girls spent their days prattling about this thing and the other. When the weather was clear, they sat together in the garden, enjoying autumn's warming sun.

"They seem to be getting on like sisters." Remy came to stand beside me at the window where I was looking down at them. He carried a glass of brandy in his hand. For once, he was not on a hunt, out with his falcons, or riding through the godforsaken countryside. In fact, it made me wonder why he was not. He must know he could expect no solicitation from me. The good doctor's enemas didn't seem to be working.

As I took the brandy from him, I looked him straight in the eyes.

His gaze dropped away from mine.

"Gabrielle can get along even with my father."

"But isn't this what you wanted? To please the marquise in order to appease your father?"

"Yes." But my father was a stubborn bastard, taking every opportunity these days to remind me he intended to disinherit me.

The sound of laughter, carried by the wind, pierced the glass, reaching our ears.

"Your plan must soon start working, then."

Not quickly enough! If I could not persuade my father from his designs before the babe was born, then all was lost. Unless...the babe turned out to be a girl.

Remy was watching me. "What?"

"If the babe turns out to be a girl..."

He raised his glass in my direction. "Then all of your father's plans will have been for naught."

"Precisely." And if it were indeed a girl my stepmother was spawning, things were not quite so bleak as they appeared. My father could not risk his annulment unless he were certain of having another heir. Was he certain? How did one tell about such things?

I took another look at Lisette from Souboscq. She wasn't the worst of females. She didn't talk overly much, and mostly, she kept out of sight. If my father thought I were truly reformed, then perhaps he wouldn't be quite so bent on pursuing his course.

Father plucked at my arm as I tried to leave the hall after dinner. I offered it to him as if that were exactly my intention, watching as Remy disappeared up the stair. Later, I would find him. I only hoped he wouldn't want what he usually did. I cringed from the thought of another disappointing encounter. I aided the count to standing and then matched my steps to his. It used to be he could easily outpace me. Now his stride was less than half of my own. War wounds, he said, though I imagined that to be an excuse for old age.

"We need to speak. In private."

Well. That was something. He could hardly stand to look at me. I would never have hoped he might desire to speak to me. I walked him up the stair and into his chambers. Leaned against the mantel as a servant lit a taper and the count settled himself in a chair. The dagger that lay on the mantel winked at me, its many-colored jewels reflecting the taper's light.

"I hope you understood me, Julien. When I spoke to you about the annulment."

I tried to smile. "I understood you wanted to wash your hands of me."

He sighed the tired, heavy sigh of an aged and wearied man. "Nothing could be further from the truth. I only wish that..."

I stared at him, daring him to say what I knew he'd always thought.

"I only wish I had never married your mother. How can you fault me for that?"

Fault him? For wishing to erase the very circumstance of my birth? "Then perhaps I ought to say I wish you had never been my father."

He recoiled as if I had slapped him.

"How can you fault me for that?"

"I can't." He shook his head as he spoke. "How can I? I've failed you, Julien...in every way possible."

It was the truest thing he'd ever said. "You may have hated her, but I loved her."

"No. Don't say that. Never say that!" That old look of fire and wrath, the one that had always given me pause during my youth, had come back into his eyes.

But I didn't care what he thought anymore. "She loved me."

"She cursed you. She twisted you."

"At least she knew what I was."

Chapter 21.

Alexandre Lefort Rural France I gathered the dog in my arms and started off through the night. But this was not the forest of my youth, where I had known the shape of every tree and the turn of every brook. I did not know in which direction I was walking, knew only that we had to get away from this place of death.

I'd been waiting in France with the dog runner when a great restlessness came over me. I tried to ease it by surveying the tools of his cooper's trade. When that didn't work, I helped him feed wood shavings into the fire.

"The dog likes it."

"...the wood shavings?"

"The fire. I treat him well over on this side of the border. I tend his wounds. I feed him meat. And cream. Keep him warm."

"And how is he used to being treated?"

The man laughed. "He's used to being whipped and starved and beaten by my cousin."

"And this is the dog that's to deliver my lace?" What madness was this?

"My cousin trained him. Dressed himself up in the uniform of one of those border soldiers whenever he beat the cur. Worked like a charm. He wraps the lace around the dog and dresses him up in a fur coat. When he lets the dog go, it runs straight to me."

"He beats the dog? On purpose?"

The man shrugged. "It's the only way that seems to work. Mon cher argent, I call him. My little purse. An easy way to make my fortune."

The restlessness had grown into a pronounced distaste of my host. And fear. If anything happened to my lace, then Lisette and the viscount were doomed. "I need some air." It was partly true. The smell of pungent, freshly worked wood only partially overcame the fetid stench of his person. The place seemed to close in about me: airless and oppressive.

The man looked up from the fire. "Don't...the dog might not-"

I closed the door on his objections. If that dog had not been carrying my lace, I would have warned him far away from here.

Out in the night, only the breeze whispered. But here, too, there was a restlessness. It was a countryside unknown to me, and the night might have held any manner of creatures, but I turned from the yard, and walked behind the house toward the wood. I had always felt safest in the forest. Even at Souboscq, I found myself often wandering past the fields toward the trees.

As I entered the wood, I heard a shifting in the space before me and the scuff of a boot against the earth. Remembering the lessons of my youth, I pressed my back against the nearest tree trunk and held myself as still as I could.

"You hear something?" The voice sounded anxious. And uncertain.

"It's the sound of me, pissing." That voice was supremely confident.

"You sure this is the place?"

"That's what De Grote said."

"It wasn't one of the other smugglers?"

"It's this one." There was silence for a few moments. Then came the sound of a man spitting. "How many dogs you think are trying to cross the border this night?"

"Twenty? Thirty?"

"I bet there's hundreds. At least we have it easy. De Grote tells us who, and he tells us when. Those other bounty hunters have to take their chances."

De Grote. Again. He hadn't been content just to take my money. He wanted my lace, too. And these men wanted the dog.

My dog. Who was carrying my lace.

I didn't make a habit of antagonizing people. I had not purposefully set out to make De Grote my enemy. I had approached him honorably, intending to conduct our transaction in an honorable way. Even after he'd had me beaten, I had turned the lace over to him for the smuggling...and I had left him in possession of my father's dagger. I had not wanted to harm anyone.

Not even him.

But now, he intended to steal my future. Our future: the viscount's, Lisette's, and mine. I would not allow that to happen.

As my resolve hardened, I felt a brick settle at the bottom of my stomach, and the hairs at the back of my neck began to prickle. I had experienced another night like this one, a lifetime ago. Back when I had lived with my father in St. Segon, the village priest had made it his duty to dog me, to harass me, to taunt me.

The forest had been my haven, a near-perfect paradise, where there were none to mock me but the birds, and none to hiss at me but the tortoises who lived by the brook. But one night, when I was ten years old, the priest had decided to follow me home.

I tried to lose him by leaving the path and dodging through the trees, but always he had reappeared like some tormenting spirit. I plucked a small stone from a stream and placed it into my slingshot. I wanted only to turn him from his course. I took aim at his arm, and I let the stone fly.

But he moved.

The priest moved, the stone hit him in the forehead, and he fell over, dead.

I never told anyone what I had done, though I knew God had seen me. I dragged his body across the stream and over a hill, where I left it in front of a wolf's den. Then I ran home to the cave my father lived in.

I wanted to tell him. I yearned to tell him.

But I did not want him to hate me.

So I talked to the only one who knew what I had done. I talked to God. I begged him to forgive me. I promised him I would be good for the rest of my life. I would do good. I would never hurt any man again.

And I hadn't.

But this De Grote was different.

He was my village priest come back to haunt me. He would not leave me be.

My fight was not with the bounty hunters, and so I let them go about their business. I watched as they shot the cooper. It was only when they turned their guns on the dog that I showed myself. And then, it was only to chase the dog from them. I ran after it, pushing through the trees into the unknown. I had come to the cooper's cottage by way of a road. But now, in the shifting shadows of the moonlit night, I did not know if I was running away from the border or toward it. I risked losing myself in that forest, but to have lost the dog and the lace would have been worse still.

I had to pause after nearly every step, to hear which way the dog was headed. Finally, I came upon it, curled into itself and panting, nestled within the roots of a tree. It was resting easy in my arms now, though that did no good in helping me find my way through the wood.

I looked toward my left. Looked to my right. Before us, the black shadows of the forest seemed to ease. I set out in that direction. Following the thinning in the trees, I finally walked into a clearing. Beyond it lay a shack.

The dog stirred, clawing at my arms.