For the knowledge that the lavender-eyed Comte had in all probability already forgotten her existence.
* * *
Christian had instructed his coachman to drive around and park the carriage a short distance from the front entrance of the Fleur de Lis, once he was assured Lisette had climbed safely into one of the downstairs windows of the tavern. He was determined, before leaving the area completely, to see that Lisette reached her bedchamber safely.
He had been lying, of course, when he told Lisette he intended to go on to further entertainment. Helene Rousseau, and the clandestine comings and goings to her tavern, was his only reason for being in Paris.
At least it had been.
The puzzle that was Lisette Duprée had changed that somewhat.
There was a mystery there he did not understand. Helene Rousseau had been so overprotective of Lisette earlier in the tavern when she held a gun to his back, and yet at the same time there was an obvious lack of familial feeling between the two women. A disconnection that surely should not have been there—
Ah, he had just seen candlelight behind the curtains in the bedchamber he believed to be Lisette’s, instantly reassuring him as to her safe return.
‘Drive on,’ Christian instructed his coachman before settling back against the plush upholstery, his mind still occupied with the relationship between Helene Rousseau and Lisette.
There had never been mention of André Rousseau having a daughter, and surely the other man could not have been old enough to have a daughter of Lisette’s age? And yet, to Christian’s knowledge, Helene Rousseau had no other siblings.
In any case, the discovery of Lisette was an unexpected vulnerability in regard to Helene Rousseau. One that Christian felt sure Aubrey Maystone would not hesitate to use against that lady. As the Frenchwoman had been involved in using other innocents as pawns in her own wicked games.
Christian frowned at the very idea of using Lisette in that way.
Another reason for not taking her back to England with him?
He found the whole concept of using her as a pawn in a game to be totally repugnant. Complete anathema to his code as a gentleman.
And yet there was no place for a gentlemanly code when it came to the defence of the Crown.
But to use Lisette in that way, no matter whether she was the innocent she appeared to be or something more, did not sit well with Christian—
‘We have company, milord!’ his coachman had time to call out grimly seconds before the carriage came to a lurching halt and the door beside Christian was wrenched open, a masked man appearing in that open doorway, a raised pistol in his hand.
Li
sette’s earlier warning barely had time to register before there was a flash in the darkness and the sound of a pistol being fired.
* * *
Lisette sat up with a start, her tears ceasing as she heard the sound of an explosion of some kind ringing through the stillness of the night, followed by the sound of raised voices.
She rose quickly to her feet before hurrying across the bedchamber to look out of the window.
The street was poorly lit, of course, but she could see a carriage a short way down, and it appeared to be surrounded by a group of darkly clothed men. A carriage that seemed all too familiar to her, considering she had been driven back to the tavern in it just a short time ago.
The Comte de Saint-Cloud’s carriage!
Lisette gave no thought to her own safety as she ran across the bedchamber and threw open the door before running down the hallway to descend the stairs. She heard the sound of a second shot being fired and then a third, causing her fingers to fumble with the bolts and key as she quickly unlocked the front door of the tavern before throwing it open and running out into the street.
The carriage was still parked a short distance away, but there were no longer any dark-clothed men surrounding it, the street quiet apart from the horses snorting and stamping their shod feet on the cobbled road in their obvious distress.
Lisette stilled her mad flight at the sound of that deathly silence, her steps becoming hesitant as she approached the carriage, its door flung open and swinging slightly in the breeze.
In keeping with this lowly neighbourhood, no one else had emerged from any of the buildings in response to hearing those three shots being fired, and Lisette herself feared what she might find once she had reached and looked inside that eerily silent carriage.
She raised a shocked hand to her mouth as she drew nearer and saw a body lying on the cobbles beside the carriage, recognising the groom who had opened the door for her earlier tonight lying so still and unmoving, a bloom of red having appeared on the chest of his grey livery.
Which surely meant that the Comte de Saint-Cloud was inside the carriage still; otherwise Lisette had no doubt he would be out here now tending to his groom. Or perhaps, having discovered the man dead, he was off chasing the men who had attacked them.