"What the hell do you think happened, Candover?" Andreville said with barely controlled rage. "A girl who looks like Maggie, in the hands of a drunken gang of ex-soldiers?"
Rafe pushed himself to his feet and began pacing, no more able to sit quietly in die face of such an atrocity than Andreville was. With anguish, he thought of Margot's near-hysteria in the Place du Carrousel and after. Dear God, no wonder she had nightmares of clawing hands and beastly faces; no wonder she needed to be reminded that not all men were savages.
Andreville began speaking again, his face averted. "Since they had a beautiful girl and a cellar full of wine, they were in no hurry to move on, so they settled down and enjoyed themselves. For the next day and a half, they stayed continuously drunk, raping her whenever one of them was in the mood.
"Then I happened by, traveling in the uniform of a French grenadier captain. When the villagers saw me, the mayor came out and begged me to get the soldier-pigs to move on before they destroyed the whole village.
"I was going to pass on by. After all, I was alone, and not even a genuine officer. But when the mayor said they had an English girl…" The fingers of Andreville's right hand splayed flat out on the wall beside him. "I had to see if I could help. So I went into the inn, praised the soldiers for their patriotism and cleverness in catching spies, chided them for overzealousness, and inspired them to get moving to Paris because the emperor needed them."
Rafe imagined that slight, elegant figure facing down a gang of armed drunks, and understood why Margot had fallen in love with him. Lord Robert would have been hardly more than a boy himself. "How did you get them to release Margot instead of taking her with them?"
"Sheer force of personality." Andreville said with even greater dryness. "I said that I would take the English spy to Paris for questioning myself. Her horse and luggage were in the stable, so I got her mounted and both of us the hell away from there.
"It didn't take long to realize what kind of girl I'd rescued. She was half dead from what they'd done to her, and wearing a ragged dress covered with her father's blood. Any other woman would have been raving mad or unconscious. But Maggie…" His drawn face eased a little.
"When I stopped the horses a mile down the road to introduce myself and assure her that she was safe, she pulled a pistol on me. It had been hidden in her saddlebag. I'll never forget the sight: her hands were shaking, her face was so bruised that her own mother wouldn't have recognized her, and she'd been through an ordeal that I wouldn't have wished on Napoleon himself. Yet she was unbroken." After a long silence, he added softly, "She's the strongest person I've ever know."
Rafe realized that he was pacing around his end of the cell, hands clenched, his eyes unseeing. Never in his life had he had a stronger desire to be alone, to assimilate the horror of what had happened to Margot.
To see her father murdered in front of her eyes; to have had her sexual initiation as the victim of a gang of brutes… How had she kept her sanity? Yet she had not only survived, but developed into an extraordinary woman. The thought of the strength and resilience that required staggered him.
On top of the helpless pain he felt on her behalf was the crushing knowledge of his own guilt. If he hadn't hurt Margot so badly, she would not have been in France. No wonder she had accused him of being responsible for her father's death. It was true, and there was no way on God's earth that he could ever make amends for the catastrophe which he had indirectly caused.
The frantic energy churning inside him was unbearable. Rafe, the quintessential civilized man, burned with the need to do something physically violent- preferably kill Margot's assailants with his bare hands.
Accurately reading Rafe's expression, Andreville said, "If it's any comfort, most of the men who joined the Grand Armee that long ago are probably long since dead. One can only hope that each of them died slowly and painfully."
"One can only hope," Rafe said thickly. He pictured one of those anonymous men being flayed alive by Spanish partisans; another dying of gangrene after ten days with a bullet in his belly; a third slowly freezing to death on the plains of Russia.
The visions didn't help much.
Muscle by muscle, he forced himself to relax. If he didn't, he'd go mad.
Andreville had returned to his corner and sunken into the straw. The emotions of his story were etched on his face and shadows showed under the blue eyes. Since he also loved Margot, this must be harrowing for him to speak of.
When he had reestablished a fragile control, Rafe said, "I suppose that after that, things had to get better."
"Yes, though it was a bit of a quandary for me. I could hardly abandon Maggie in the middle of France, but I was engaged in some vital business. When I explained, she said that she had no reason to return to England, so why didn't I take her with me? So I did.
"I took a flat in Paris. Because of our similar coloring, we claimed to be a brother and his widowed sister. She became Marguerite to the world in general, and Maggie to me, because she no longer wanted to be Margot Ashton." Forgetting his injured arm, Andreville started to make a gesture with his left hand, then winced. "Even before we reached Paris, I asked her to marry me so that she would have the protection of my name. Also, of course, if something happened to me she would be a considerable heiress."
Rafe swallowed, then said woodenly, "So you are actually husband and wife."
"No, she refused, saying that we shouldn't marry merely because of some unlucky circumstances. Instead, she offered to become my mistress if I wished."
So that was how it had begun. Rafe said, "I'm amazed that she could bear to let a man touch her."
"I was amazed, too, but she said that she wanted some happier memories to replace the bad ones," Andreville explained. "I had some doubts about the arrangement-remnants of a proper upbringing, no doubt-but I agreed. I was only twenty years old myself and didn't really want to be married, yet only an absolute fool would reject such an offer from a woman like her."
Though Andreville was glossing over what he had done, Rafe knew that it must have taken infinite kindness and patience to help Margot overcome such a shattering experience and become the passionate woman she was now. Rafe was profoundly grateful that she had had such a man to help her. With equal intensity, he resented the fact that he himself had not been the one; when she had needed him most, he had not been there.
Needing to acknowledge what the other man had done, he said, "She was fortunate to have you."
"We were fortunate to have each other." Andreville turned his uninjured hand palm up. "We've worked together ever since. I would move around Europe as necessary, often for months at a time. I've traveled with armies, crossed the Channel with smugglers, and generally did a lot of other harebrained, uncomfortable things that seem like great adventures when one is young and foolish." He smiled wryly. "As a child I rebelled against staid English respectability, but I must say that rebellion has lost its appeal since I turned thirty.
"Anyhow, home was wherever Maggie was living. Usually that was Paris. She led a quiet life, not like now when she's playing the countess and moving in society. She developed her own network of informants, and turned out to have a really spectacular talent for gathering information. The rest I think you know."
Rafe sighed. 'To think that I had decided that you must be the spy in the delegation."
"Oh?" Andreville's eyebrows arched.
Rafe explained how he set up his own watchers, and how he had discovered that Andreville visited Margot, Roussaye, and Lemercier. He also mentioned the inferences he had drawn from the amount of money that Margot had received from her partner in spying.