As a wearh who drank the blood of living creatures for sustenance, never slept, and could reduce a mizzenmast to splinters with his bare hands, Marcus felt sure that bowing to servants was the least of what warmbloods might notice.
“I suppose we can attribute your oddness to being American,” Gallowglass mused, surveying the Bordelaise on the docks. Every last one of them was festooned with ribbons of red, white, and blue. The French were more visibly patriotic than most of the citizens of Philadelphia.
“Great Jesus and his sainted mother! Who is that?” A small, dark wearh with a pronounced squint approached them through the crowd with two spirited horses in tow. Marcus could tell what he was from the way the man smelled, which was so much less gamey and ripe than a warmblood. The man was slightly bowlegged, as though he had spent too much time on horseback.
“This is Matthew’s latest project,” Gallowglass said. “Marcus, meet Davy Gams. We call him Hancock.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir.” Marcus bowed. Davy’s eyes popped.
“He’s American,” Gallowglass said apologetically.
Davy glowered at him. “You Americans have caused a great deal of trouble and cost a packet, too. You better be worth it.”
Not knowing how to respond, Marcus adopted the silent, attentive attitude that he had perfected while working for the doctors Otto.
“How old is he?” Davy demanded of Gallowglass, who was studying the faces of the people passing them.
“Bonjour!” Gallowglass called to one particularly attractive young woman wearing a red, white, and blue rosette on her bodice who was shopping among the hucksters at the wharf. He turned back to Davy. “Somewhere in his fifties, I warrant. Matthew didn’t give me exact facts and figures.”
“Damn frogs.” Davy spat on the ground. “They talk a good game, with their cockades and coffee, but you can’t trust them. Not even Matthew.”
“I’m only twenty-four, Gallowglass. I was born in 1757,” Marcus said, swallowing down the stab of desire that shot through his loins at the sight of that Bordelaise bosom, fair and freckled.
“Gallowglass means days, not years. And don’t contradict your elders,” Davy said, cuffing Marcus on the chin. Once, it would have broken his jaw; now the blow registered only as an unpleasant reverberation. “It doesn’t matter, in any case. You’re as useless as a fart in a jam jar.”
“Fuck off.” Marcus made a rude gesture, one he’d learned on the Aréthuse from Faraj, the ship’s pilot. He could now curse in Arabic as well as Dutch, French, German, and English.
“I suppose we’ll have to take him to Paris.” Davy let out an earsplitting whistle. “For that, we’ll need a carriage rather than horses. You can’t travel on horseback when you’ve got a baby with you. More needless expense.”
“I know, I know.” Gallowglass clucked with sympathy and clapped Davy on the shoulder. “I tried to put in at Saint-Malo, but the seas weren’t having it.”
“Bloody Matthew and his daft ideas.” Davy’s finger shot up in warning. “One of these days, Eric, I’m going to strangle that boy.”
“I’ll hold him down while you do it,” Marcus said, still smarting from all that he’d discovered about his new life from Gallowglass. “High-handed bastard.”
Davy and Gallowglass stared at him, astonished. Then Davy began to laugh in the gasping, unpracticed wheezes of one who hadn’t been amused in some time.
“Not yet sixty and already angry with his sire,” Davy said, wheezing and coughing some more.
“I know,” Gallowglass said fondly. “The lad has real potential.”
* * *
—
MARCUS HAD NEVER ridden in a carriage before, only a wagon. He found that he did not like it. Mostly he was able to make it outside before being sick. Hancock soon grew impatient with their frequent stops, and resorted to holding Marcus’s head out the open window so that he could continue vomiting while they traveled.
His eyes streaming from the grit from the road, Marcus clamped his teeth shut against the rising bile (his guts were empty of blood and wine by this point), and strained to overhear the conversation in the carriage, before the words were blown away by the wind.
“—Granddad will have a stroke,” Gallowglass said.
“Wasn’t Matthew strictly forbidden—” Hancock’s next words were inaudible.
“Wait until Baldwin discovers.” Gallowglass sounded both alarmed and pleased by the prospect.
“—another bloody war will break out.”
“At least Granny will—”
“—dote on him like an old woman.”
“Watch your tongue around Marthe or she’ll—”
“—better idea to take him there if she’s in town.”
“Auntie Fanny won’t be at home. We’ll have a devil of a time—”
“—deposit him with Fran?oise and then have a drink.”
“It is a lot to take in—”
“—fucking boat home to his family.”
The strange names—Marthe, Fanny, Fran?oise—swirled through Marcus’s swimming brain, along with the realization that he had not only a grandfather but a grandmother as well. After years of being alone in the world, Marcus felt he was now part of a family. Warm feelings of obligation filled his hollow veins with gratitude. Even with his head bouncing on his neck like a pumpkin on a stalk as they careened along the Bordeaux–Paris road, Marcus was aware that he owed this third—no, fourth—chance at a new life to the chevalier de Clermont.
This new life would be his last, Marcus promised himself.
* * *
—
“REMEMBER, DON’T BOW TO ANYONE in this house. They won’t like it.” Gallowglass straightened Marcus’s limp, stained neckcloth. “I’m sure your mother was a lovely woman, but you’re in France now.”
Marcus put this bit of intelligence into a crowded compartment of his mind that he was reserving for future study.
“Soon, you will meet a woman called Fran?oise. She is not to be trifled with, no matter how appetizing she smells. Charles will beat you with his rolling pin if you so much as look at her,” Gallowglass continued, twitching Marcus’s coat into place. “And do not, under any circumstances, play cards with your aunt Fanny.”
An arresting combination of aromas, including pastry, lemons, and starch, filled the carriage. Three male wearhs sniffed the air like wolves tracking an alluring new animal. Marcus looked out the window, eager to see the creature attached to this irresistible scent.
“Oh la vache!” shrieked a rawboned woman of impressive height and lung capacity. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“Mademoiselle Fran?oise. Do not be alarmed,” Hancock said, leaping out of the carriage and taking her hand. “He is nothing but a mewling infant, and poses no danger to you.”
“Infant!” Marcus exclaimed. He’d killed British soldiers, saved dozens of Americans and French patriots, assisted at several amputations, and fed off a cutthroat thief before accidentally killing him in Newburyport. He was no infant.
Marcus was, however, still a virgin. He eyed Fran?oise’s quivering lips with interest. They were full and moist, and promised pleasure. And the woman smelled heavenly.
Fran?oise’s eyes narrowed, and she pressed those lush lips together into a taut, forbidding line.
“This is Marcus. He belongs to Matthew. We thought we could leave him with Fanny.” Gallowglass climbed out of the carriage and gave the woman a dazzling smile.
It might have worked on a warmblood, but not on a wearh. Fran?oise crossed her arms, which made her look twice her already ample size, and snorted.
“You cannot leave him here. Madame Fanny is out,” she said.
“That does it. Take him to Philippe. Then we can make a run for it and be as far from Paris as possible when he explodes.” Davy wiped his brow with his cuff.
“Where is she?” Gallowglass sailed forth through the front doors, undeterred. Fran?oise bustled after him. “Denmark? Sept-Tours? Burgundy? London?”
“No, milord. Mademoiselle Fanny is at Dr. Franklin’s house. Helping him with his correspondence.” Fran?oise glared at Marcus, as if he were somehow to blame for her mistress’s absence.