The English Heiress Read Online Free PDF

and allowed her eyes to rest thoughtfully on the wooden door. She had been out of that door any number of times. Possibly she could have escaped herself, but she had never considered it—not while Papa, Mama and François were still prisoners and might be tortured or killed for her freedom. Now there was only Papa, and he was not so physically weakened as Mama and François had been. Escape was no longer impossible. What was more, her lover—Leonie uttered a slightly hysterical giggle. What an inappropriate word for Louis le Bébé. Louis loved nothing and no one, except himself.
    A disdainful smile curved Leonie’s lips briefly as she sat on the floor, her legs pulled up close to her body, resting her chin on her knees. She did not hate Louis. After all, their purposes were exactly alike. He used her to satisfy the needs of his body, but she was using him also—and she had the better of it because she knew what Louis was, but he was much mistaken about her. He thought her weak and stupid. Perhaps he even thought she was in love with him. Leonie laughed softly.
    Then she grew thoughtful again. She could have loved Louis. She was ripe and ready for love, and at first he seemed so lovable with his round, innocent face. Heaven made a great many mistakes, but Louis’ soft features—youthful, guileless—which had gained him the soubriquet of le Bébé, must be more than a mistake. It must have been a deliberate joke or a deliberate test of people’s perceptiveness. Louis was everything his face was not. He was a thief with a keen eye for what would do him good and a heart as cold as ice. Louis sought comfort, pleasure and advancement. He had chosen his profession deliberately and had never gone hungry or been caught. Louis never did anything without a good reason, and although he took no personal pleasure in the misery of others, he would never hesitate to use pain and misery to advance his own cause. But Leonie did not know that in the beginning.
    Leonie only knew that Louis had shrunk away rather than press forward when Jean-Paul had signaled his other dogs to take their turn on her abused body. It was a small thing, but that had burned itself deeply into Leonie’s mind, one tiny flicker of humanity in a black night of bestiality. Weeks later she recognized him at once when he brought them food, and her good opinion was confirmed because for once the meal was not deliberately made more foul. Louis, unlike the guard who usually brought the food, did not throw the stale, moldy bread into the slime on the floor or spit into the stinking soup, prepared with meat a starving dog would have refused. Made bold by desperation, Leonie whispered a plea for a drop of clean water, a crust of fresh bread, for her little brother. Louis had not answered but had given her some decent bread. He had had to be quick, for the other guard had come down the stairs to curse him for spending too much time with the prisoners.
    “You were late I thought you were not coming,” the young thief had answered mildly.
    “So what? Let them starve as we have starved,” the older man growled, his eyes suspicious.
    Leonie had turned away, sick at heart, hiding the clean bread with her body. Sometimes she could hear what went on in the courtyard through the half-window in their cellar, and she had once heard one of Jean-Paul’s men threatening to accuse another of treachery, or currying favor with the ex-magistrates of the town so that if the revolution should fail, he would be safe. If the old guard wanted to get the young one into trouble, he had only to accuse him of trying to ease the lot of the prisoners whom Jean-Paul hated so much.
    At first Louis did nothing to help the de Conyerses, but neither did he do anything to increase their torment. Once in a while, the rarity heightening the value of what was received, he did more. He pretended fear when he brought a decent stew, fresh bread, a wedge of good cheese. He said he had thrown away the foul