Page 98 of The Dueling Duchess

She shrugged off the thought and continued. “Everything was lost when our boat capsized: my father’s plans, what little we had left in terms of family valuables, our small amount of money, and all our documents.”

Not a day passed that Cecile didn’t regret losing her father’s bag.

“All I had in my possession was my cousin’s name and direction and a few coins that had been in my skirt pocket. My father had told me to go to him if I was ever in need of help.”

She snorted, remembering how stupidly hopeful she’d been.

“Curtis wasn’t so difficult to find,” Cecile said, not wanting to dwell on those nightmare weeks when she’d been adrift in a foreign country with hostile strangers, afraid to speak the language. As for the French émigrés she’d eventually encountered, well, their attempts to manipulate or use her had been even worse than the disdain of the hard-eyed Englishmen and women.

“That is . . . well, that is quite a harrowing story,” he said after a long moment.

“I am one of thousands who have similar tales, although perhaps without the shipwreck. It might sound bad, but it was still much better than staying in France.”

“Did your father’s position as royal gunmaker make him a target of anti-Royalists?”

“That was part of the problem,” she admitted. “But there was also the fact that we’d lived for many years in the household of the Duc de La Fontaine, who served as my father’s patron. Their association was a close one and we were—well, let’s just say it wasn’t safe for us after things began to fall apart.”

“And your cousin is your only relative?”

At her raised eyebrow, he added, “I recall you saying when we were in France that you had no relatives.”

Not for the first time did she consider telling the man beside her that she was a duchess in her country.

She held her peace at the painful memory of Curtis’s and his wife, Martha’s, reaction.

Guy would probably not call her a liar as her cousin had done, but without those precious papers in her father’s bag, her marriage to the duke might as well have never taken place.

“No other family that I know of,” she said, which was the truth. “My father was an only child. I suppose there might be people on my mother’s side, but she died in childbed, and I never met any of her relations growing up. My father always seemed content to train me in his craft even though I was not a son. Perhaps if things had been different, he might have taken another wife in time.” She shrugged. “But then the world went mad, and nobody was buying expensive, handcrafted pistols, so having a male heir was the least of his worries.”

“You mentioned your father visiting the duke in La Force Prison? Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“Very.”

“Why would he take such a risk?”

“I’d grown up in the castle, not a daughter of the house but not a servant, either—always apart. The duke was old even when I was a child. He had one son who’d died years before, as had his duchess. Really, we were his family, and he was ours. My father helped the duke escape, and he helped us with the money he brought with him. Even though we were no better than tradespeople, those distinctions suddenly didn’t matter during the Revolution.”

“How long did you hide?” he asked, picking her up again to lift her over the same deep rut in the road.

This time the memory of those dark days robbed her of any appreciation of his minor chivalrous action.

“We lived deep in the country, and the duke had always been a well-liked landlord and master, so the discontent came more slowly there. Not until men came from the city did the trouble start. We were all fortunate that they were so busy ransacking the castle for valuables, they had no time to spare for us. Aided by one of the grooms, Papa took an old farm wagon, and the duke dressed up in ragged clothing.”

Cecile could still recall her shock the first time she’d seen the magnificent duke stripped of his wig and jewels and brocades. In rough homespun and sabots, he had resembled a skinny old peasant—so long as one didn’t look at his soft, white hands.

“We stayed in sizeable towns where people were less apt to ask questions than they would in small villages. We were just more of the displaced peasantry roaming the country, a middle-aged man taking care of his young daughter and aged father.

“Even so, we could never stay for long before people began to be suspicious and we would have to move—we did so often. The duke had taken some money and jewels with him when we fled, so we sold bits and pieces here and there. My father worked when he could—repairing weapons or clocks or anything requiring a skilled touch.”

Cecile had been excited at first and had looked forward to being on the run. It had seemed so romantic and much more interesting than living in the boring countryside. “I thought it was a game at first, moving from town to town. But as the weeks turned into months turned into years, I started to understand that we might need to hide forever—or at least until the money ran out. The stories one would hear about Paris”—she shivered—“it was hard to know fact from fiction. It was impossible to know who might be in charge from one day to the next. When we’d hear the Royalist factions were gaining ground, the duke would begin to hope. But only days later we’d hear of some new atrocity perpetrated against the aristocracy or church.

“After we learned of the king’s execution, the duke went into decline. I think he simply lost hope. He would not leave the country with us, so my father and I stayed because there was nobody else to take care of him.”

When Guy stopped walking, Cecile looked up from her thoughts to discover they were back at the theater.

“Well, here we are,” she said lamely, feeling flustered at how much she’d revealed.

He set a hand on her shoulder before she could escape into the familiar comfort of her business.