Tied With a Bow

geography, but Paris was many miles from the coast. She had not slept long enough to make such a journey.
    Her dream rushed in on her, the swirling stars, the cool night flowing and parting around them like a river, the road a silver ribbon unspooling between the hills below. The texture of his shirt againt her cheek. The strength of his arms.
    She shoved the memory aside.
    And England . . .
    Loss blanketed her, heavy, wet, cold. Her head was a roaring snowstorm, her stomach a lump of ice.
    “You tear me away from everything I know.” Everything loved and familiar. “You will rip me apart.”
    “I saved you.” His voice was deep. Implacable.
    “You are killing me,” she said passionately.
    She wanted to die.
    “I offer you life,” he said at last, softly. “In accordance with your mother’s last prayer. What you make of it is up to you.”
    Almost, she was ashamed.
    A door creaked in the silence. Her breath stopped. Sounds drifted from the stable below that were not made by cows or mice. The scrape of a boot. A jingle of harness.
    Cold sweat snaked down her spine. Had they been followed? Maman was gone, Papa and little Philippe, dead. In her guilt and grief, she longed to join them. But the will to live was not so easily extinguished.
    She did not want, after all, to be discovered.
    “Stay,” her rescuer commanded.
    He flowed past her and climbed—jumped— floated down the ladder. His cape billowed from his shoulders as he dropped silently to the floor.
    Aimée sat frozen in her nest of hay, her heart beating like a rabbit’s. Snatches of conversation rose through the trapdoor.
    “. . . into Portsmouth . . .”
    “. . . look the other way . . .”
    “. . . pay for passage . . .” In her rescuer’s deep voice.
    “We don’t need your money.” She could barely make out the langue d’oil of northern France, spoken with a distinctly British accent. “These little trips pay for themselves.”
    “If you sell her,” her rescuer said, clear and cold, “I will destroy you.”
    “We don’t traffic in children.” Equal disdain in the speaker’s voice.
    She crept closer to the trapdoor, trying to get a glimpse of the men below. They were barely more than shapes in the dark: her tall rescuer in his broad-shouldered cloak; a burly fellow in an oversized coat and battered hat; a younger man, slim as a steel blade.
    “Your girl isn’t the first aristocrat we’ve smuggled across the Channel,” the burly man continued.
    “You’re one of us,” the younger man said. “You should know that.”
    One of what ? Aimée wondered. Smugglers ? English ?
    A light flickered. Not a flare like a match, not the honest yellow glow of lamplight, but a slow growing silver light, cupped like a ball in her rescuer’s hand. The eerie light illuminated his face, cold, pale, and perfect as the statue of Apollo in the chateau gardens. Wide, clear brow. Long, straight nose. Firm, unsmiling mouth. His fair hair fell, unpowdered and untamed, to his shoulders.
    She quivered deep inside with fear and an instinct she did not recognize.
    “But I am not like you,” he said softly.
    “Not yet, maybe,” the younger man said. He, too, was beautiful, with a lean, clever face and a handkerchief knotted around his throat.
    “Just a matter of time now,” the older man agreed. “Lucky for you we found you.”
    “You came for the girl.”
    “We were looking for you both.” The burly fellow swept off his hat to scratch under it. “Lord Amherst’s orders. You’re under his protection now.”
    “I do not serve your earthly lord. Or require his protection.”
    The boy shot him a look from thick-lashed eyes. “You won’t feel so high-and-mighty after they toss you out of Heaven.”
    The large man cleared his throat. “Amherst will take you in. Assuming you make it to England.”
    Aimée frowned. But he was taking her to England. He had said so.
    “Damon Carleton, Earl of Amherst,” the burly man repeated. He replaced his hat carefully on his head. “Try not to forget.”
    “I believe my hearing and my memory extend that far,” her rescuer said dryly.
    “You’d better hope so. When you lose your powers, your memory goes, too. You come down to earth as a child. A little older, if you’re lucky.”
    “So I will be . . . human.” His voice was flat, strained of emotion.
    Aimée blinked. Of course he was human . What else could he be?
    An angel come to save us, Maman had said.
    Ah, no. Aimée’s mind whirled. Phrases