Brandywine: Regency historical romance (The Brocade Series, Book 1) by Jackie Ivie Page B

questioned finally, his voice low and soft. “Did someone hit her?”
    He used a dull tone while Brandy’s brilliant eyes filled with tears. He watched as they slid down her cheeks. She didn’t appear to even feel them.
    “No,” she whispered.
    Gil longed to wipe his hands on the side of his riding pants as he studied her. He’d been certain the answer would be yes.
    “Why was there blood, Helene?”
    His riding accouterment had been made to take the pressures he would exert in any outdoor situation. It was even vented to allow sweat to evaporate from his back, but there wasn’t any place he could wipe his palms without attracting her attention. And that might break the spell. He’d be damned before he moved a muscle.
    She shrugged finally and Gil nearly cursed aloud. And then she frowned and spoke in a strange, little-girl kind of voice, startling him.
    “Why are all the people cheering, Sherry? My mama doesn’t cheer.”
    “I tol’ ye not to look, Brandy! Damn, but you’ll get us kilt!”
    The words were in a high-pitched, uneducated voice.
    “Why are you talking to me like that?”  That was the little girl again, sounding even more lost and forlorn than before.
    “Like what? Cor! You’ll attract attention! Now, get yer hide back to my room a-fore I let one of me gents take ye there. Ye know wot will happen then, don’t you?”
    “But my papa isn’t with Mama. Where is he?”
    “Ye still here? Very well, watch to yer heart’s content, but don’t say I didn’t warn ye.”
    “Papa!”
    Gil wondered who the speaker using gutter French was. He guessed that the aristocratic, terror-filled girl voice was Helene…from perhaps eight years earlier. But that might put her at the Place de la Revolution in Paris, where they’d executed countless aristocrats. He’d heard about it from the fleeing nobility. It hadn’t seemed real, even then. But he hadn’t paid much attention. He’d been too young to join Wellington’s army at the time, and now he wasn’t allowed to.
    He almost prayed he was wrong.
    “What happened to your papa, Helene?”  He whispered in the stillness.
    She turned wide eyes on him, while her mouth went to a complete snarl.
    “Goddamn ye, Brandy! I done tol’ ye to get back, but no. Ye had to watch, didn’t ye? I tol’ ye Madame la Guillotine wouldn’t be a sight for young eyes, and I sure as hell can’t carry ye. I can barely move my own hide.”
    “But...my papa! They’ve gone and....”
    Gil watched her wretch unconsciously, knowing it was no sham. She looked ready to fall from her chair. Then she wiped her hand across her mouth and glared across at him.
    “Get up, Brandy! Get up! The whole city’s gone mad, and I can’t keep ye safe no more.”
    “No, Sherry! No! I’ll do anything!”
    “Ye’d best start, then! This guv looks meaner than all me other customers, and he’s comin’ this way!”
    Gil wasn’t surprised to hear that yell of hers. He still jumped slightly. And the chair creaked. He suspected she must have invented that shriek of hers then, and it served her so well, that she’d spent the intervening years perfecting it. The sound finished echoing in the enclosure. Shockingly loud to have come from the lady sitting across from him, looking at him with glazed eyes again, while a slight smile hovered on her mouth.
    “Helene?”  He asked softly.
    “Cor, but I took ye fer a brainy chap, and here ye are gettin’ all confused again. The ladies must ignore yer lack of brains in favor of yer looks, don’t they? Don’t sit there lookin’ at Brandy like that. Ye knows that Helene chit is dead and buried over in France, she is. I done tol’ ye so already.”
    “I thought you were going to trust me for a moment there, My Lady. I honestly did.”
     
    He shook his head, and the sorrow on his face made something twinge deep inside her, down where she’d buried Helene. Brandy wished she could make it better, see his blue eyes light up with interest instead