A Desperate Fortune (16 page)

Luc asked for and to my relief received the end table by the window, and before the waiter had a chance to hold the chair for me I’d claimed the banquette seat instead, with bookshelves just behind me and a wall against my shoulder that allowed me to feel safe and not exposed, and space for our motorcycle helmets to rest on my other side, on the banquette, like an extra defense. Besides which, when I looked up now I didn’t really see the room or any of the other people in it; all I saw was Luc, his head bent as he read the menu.

There was no need to read mine. I set it down and to the side. “I’ll have a pot of tea.”

“That’s very English of you. If you’re very hungry there’s a steak with cheese potatoes here that’s excellent.”

“The tea is fine.”

He looked up from the menu then, his eyebrow lifting slightly. “Just the tea?”

“That’s right.” It would have been a lie to say I wasn’t hungry, but it was the truth at least to say, “That’s all I need.”

He studied me and I felt sure his gaze dropped briefly to my scarf before he told me, “Here in France it is a New Year’s custom for a man to take a woman out to lunch. It brings us luck.”

I cast my mind back over all the holiday traditions of my childhood neighbors. “You’ve just made that up. It’s not a custom.”

“Well, it ought to be.” He nudged my menu card towards me. “You can pay for my lunch next time.”

There was no one sitting right beside us but from the tables just behind Luc came a swirl of appetizing smells that weakened my resolve. “Do you promise?”

“Word of honor.”

“You just lied about the New Year’s custom.”

His mouth curved, then straightened. “I swear on the head of my son.” His blue eyes were disarming.

I gave in then and ordered the risotto. The waiter brought us bread and nuts and olives as an appetizer, and Luc nudged them all towards me. “I was worried you had changed your mind about your New Year’s resolution, and were starting on a diet after all.”

I shook my head. “I never stick to diets. I’ve no willpower.”

“Your other resolution was much better.”

“What was that?” I had forgotten. Working on the diary had pushed less important details from my memory.

Luc reminded me, “To find a job.”

“Oh. Right.”

“What will you look for? What, in your view, is the perfect job?”

I took an olive from the dish between us. “One that lets me work alone.”

“You said that very quickly. Don’t you like to work in teams, then?”

“No.” I didn’t give an explanation, but I did admit it was a problem. “Most programming jobs involve teamwork.”

“You program computers?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing. I think it’s a very good job for an amateur code breaker,” he said. “My brother is also a programmer.”

I nodded in the way I’d noticed people did when making small talk, but I had no interest in Luc’s brother. I
was
interested in Luc, though, which for me was quite unusual. Since I’d left university, relationships with men had all conformed to the same pattern: I would meet someone I found attractive, one of us would ask the other out for dinner or for drinks, we’d spend some time together—maybe several evenings or a weekend here or there, but never longer than a month—then I would end it. Neat and tidy and controllable.

There had been four men, all nice enough, but never had I taken any interest in their lives beyond the time we’d spent together. Never had I taken any notice of their gestures or their habits or the little things about them, but with Luc I noticed everything. I really wasn’t used to that. Nor was I used to being curious enough about his life to ask, “How many brothers do you have?”

“Just one. And you?”

“There’s only me. My parents were both only children. They enjoyed it, so they wanted me to be an only child as well.”

He broke a piece of bread and asked me, “And did you enjoy it as they’d hoped, to be the only one?”

“I didn’t mind it.”

“I don’t know what that would be like,” he confessed, “to have no one to argue with.”

“I always had my cousin.”

“Yes, I can imagine she’d be very good to argue with.”

I couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was serious or teasing, but I wondered something else. “Is it that you’re worried that your son’s an only child? Is that why you want to know whether I like it?”

It seemed when his left eyebrow lifted like that I’d surprised him, though not necessarily in a bad way. He smiled. “Children teach you worries that you never knew you had, it’s true. But no, that isn’t why I asked. I—” He was interrupted by the sudden ringing of his mobile, in his pocket. He excused himself to check the number, made a face and said, “This one is work, I have to answer it. I’m sorry.”

When my cousin got a business call while eating at a restaurant, she would answer it while sitting at the table. Luc was either too polite or just too private to do likewise. Pushing back his chair, he told the caller in a low voice, “Just a moment,” and sent me a nod I took for reassurance as he headed for the stairs.

The room seemed large without him. Large and busy. Where before I’d noticed only Luc, I now became aware of all the other people sitting at their tables, all the other conversations. I tried finding something steady I could focus on and settled on my water glass, which worked until the waiter brought another couple to the table right beside our own. The woman wore a rich floral perfume and sat too close beside me on the leather banquette, and I pulled our motorcycle helmets closer to my leg to make a kind of shield as I rummaged in the pocket of my jacket for the one thing that I knew could calm me down at times like this, when all my senses were on overload.

I’d brought the little booklet of Sudoku puzzles with me when I’d come to France. I hadn’t had to use one, until now.

I was half finished with it when Luc took his chair again. “I’m sorry about that. We’re in the middle of an audit.”

“That’s all right.” I closed the booklet with my pen inside to mark the page, and tucked it back into my pocket.

Luc had noticed. “You like numbers.”

“I like puzzles,” I replied.

The waiter brought our drinks, and I sat back to give him room to set them down. Luc watched, and smiled.

“Me, too,” he said. And reached across to pour my tea.

The dagger glittered in his hand. He whistled as he went.

—Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Five

Paris

February 1732

“The tea is cold,” warned Jacques as Mary joined him at the breakfast table.

“I am sorry to be late.” She’d overslept a little, having passed a night so filled with restless nightmares of light-footed thieves and shadows sprung to sudden life that chased her ceaselessly through empty streets, that she suspected she’d have done much better never to have slept at all. Her gown and hair were tidy but she felt disheveled on the inside and disordered in her thoughts.

Jacques stood and waited while she sat, then took his chair again and said, “Had you been half an hour earlier you would have found the tea no warmer. It was cold when it was set upon the table. I was thinking to complain, but Cook is nearly at the limits of her temper as it is, and I am doubtful our new housemaid has the wits to boil water.”

“New housemaid?” Mary turned her head. “Why, what’s become of Yvette?”

“She has not come today, but claims an illness and has sent her sister in her place, together with a note of explanation that has little satisfied our Cook.”

“How do you know all this?”

He smiled. “I know our new maid’s name is—”

From the kitchen below stairs Cook bellowed, “Christiane!” and Jacques paused only briefly before finishing his sentence. “Christiane. The rest I’ve pieced together from Cook’s mutterings, for she has done the better part of serving me my breakfast.”

“Could not she use the boy? He’s served us once before.”

“Ah. Well, the boy, you see, is ill as well, although his illness is the kind that comes when lads of his age who imagine themselves men do overestimate their tolerance for drink. To his credit he did come this morning, but in such a sorry state that Cook dismissed him with a lively lecture which I no doubt could recite to you. So we are left with Cook and—”

Cook called “Christiane!” more forcefully, and Mary sought to hide her smile and nodded.

“Christiane,” she said.

“Just so,” said Jacques. He looked robust this morning and well rested, as though what had passed last night had left him unconcerned. But Mary, when he asked if she’d slept well, felt bound to answer him with honesty.

“I did not, sir. That man, the one who stopped the thief—you saw where he does lodge?”

“Across the street, yes.”

“In the very house where lives the man I fear is watching us. The man of whom I spoke to you before.”

He met her gaze with one intended to be comforting. “But surely I did put those fears to rest for you? And surely it was Providence to send us such a neighbor at an hour when we had need of him, for had I been the only man defending you last night, my dear, your gloves would be long gone and sold already for a pretty coin, to grace another’s hands.”

She might have pressed her case with more persuasion had the door not opened just then to admit a woman Mary took to be their temporary housemaid, Christiane, who looked to be a little older than the sister she’d been sent to take the place of, though she had the sort of face that having once begun to show its age now made it rather difficult to judge if she were in her thirties or beyond that. In youth, thought Mary, she would have been beautiful—pale-skinned, large-eyed, and delicate. But time with all its drudgery had left her simply pretty, with a hardened edge that showed now in the tight line of her mouth.

On seeing Mary at the table, the maid fetched a new plate from the sideboard before offering the breads and cheeses, fruit preserves and pâté. Mary, having little appetite, took only bread spread thinly with sweet butter, and not relishing the prospect of cold tea asked, with a nod towards another silver pot still on the sideboard, “Is that chocolate?”

With a silent nod the maid moved to retrieve it.

Jacques said to Mary, “Your dog is not under my feet, as he usually is of a morning. Whatever has happened?” His feigned concern was meant to make Mary smile, and it did. There at first had been little love lost between Jacques and Frisque, and although they had since warmed to each other, the dog sometimes curled himself under Jacques’s chair where he seemed to await the best moment to suddenly let out a bark.

“Frisque has stayed abed with Madame Roy, who had a slight headache last evening and wanted the rest.”

“Ah. He’ll be the very cure for her, no doubt. He—” Breaking off, he swore a sudden oath as Christiane behind him stumbled, lost her hold on the small pot of chocolate, and sloshed steaming liquid down the sleeve of his fine velvet coat. As with the thief the night before, surprise made him forget he was supposed to speak in French. “Faith, woman, have a care!”

To Mary’s great relief it seemed the English words were lost on Christiane, who was already flustered past the point of noticing such trifles, dabbing with her apron at the dripping splotch until Jacques shooed her off in irritation, whereupon she scurried altogether from the room as though she knew no other course to take in such a situation.

Mary said, “Come, let me see it,” for she had been witness to an accident of this kind with her cousin only last September, though it had been coffee then, not chocolate, and the coat involved had been plain wool, not velvet. As Jacques held his arm towards her for inspection, she reminded him in quiet tones, “You must take greater caution, sir, when something does surprise you. You have spoken English twice now, and such lapses could prove dangerous.”

“I know, I know.” He had recovered now, though he still frowned. “Can it be put right, do you think?”

He meant the coat, she realized. “Yes, I do believe so. But it must be sponged before the stain takes hold. The maid will likely melt in tears if you descend upon her,” Mary said, “but I can take it to her, if you like.” She took the coat from him and left him sitting at the table in his shirt and stock and waistcoat while she went where Christiane had gone, down by the narrow back stairs to the kitchen.

Cook was grumbling and preparing to go out, her cloak already firmly tied around her shoulders. “I’m sure I do not know, madam,” she said when Mary asked her where the housemaid was. “But if you find her, you may freely keep her. I have errands I must run, else we will have no food for dinner.” And with that she went out by the servants’ entrance at the back, into the shabby-looking courtyard that connected by an alley to the street.

Mary called out to the maid and getting no reply searched briefly through the downstairs rooms but found no sign of Christiane, and all the while she knew the stain was settling more tenaciously in Jacques’s velvet coat, and so at length she took a sponge herself and wet it in the washing basin in the kitchen, spreading out the coat upon the table near the window where there would be better light. The wind had risen outside and it whistled past the window glass and set the small panes rattling in their frosty wooden frame, but on the hearth the kitchen fire worked bravely to spread warmth, and Mary, who liked kitchens to begin with, felt quite comfortable. She would not wish the hardships of a servant’s life, but neither was she happy being idle, and in doing something useful now she gained some satisfaction. She’d begun to make some progress with the stain when she felt cold air at her back and, turning, saw the door had blown inward. Evidently Cook, for all the forcefulness of her departure, hadn’t pulled the door behind her hard enough to spring the latch. Mary set the sponge aside and crossed to where the door was swinging open on its hinges, letting in a chilling swirl of wind. For an instant, as she grasped the handle of the door to tug it closed again, she felt a stab of childish apprehension that there might be something hiding just behind it, some menacing creature from one of her fairy tales waiting to pounce, but of course it was only imagined. There was nothing behind the door. Nor was there anything lurking outside in the courtyard, and Mary relaxed with a smile as she swung the door to.

From directly behind her, a man’s arm reached forward, his bare hand completing the motion to slam the door all the way shut.

And he slid the bolt home.

* * *

Mary felt the scream swell in her throat, but it wouldn’t come out. Fear and panic had rendered her dumb. But not paralyzed. Wheeling, she felt the rough brush of the intruder’s sleeve on the skin of her cheek as he withdrew his arm again, standing too close to her, sprung as before from the shadows, from nowhere, his hard eyes as merciless as they had been in her nightmares last night.

“Do not strike me,” he warned. He spoke English, but not like an Englishman.

Mary had not even realized she’d lifted her hand to defend herself, but on the threat of his words she arrested the motion and let her hand fall to her side.

“And keep quiet.”

Her mouth had gone dryer than dust, but the galloping beat of her heart had apparently dislodged the lump in her throat and she knew that she could, if she’d wanted to, scream with a loudness to bring down the walls, but her wits, although all out of order, retained enough sense to know little would come of it. All she’d accomplish by calling for help would be to bring Jacques down to help her, and Jacques was no match for this man.

He was dressed as he had been last night, in the gray cloak and three-cornered hat, though the cloak was pushed back now to show a wool coat of a similar gray, trimmed with wine-dark red on the broad collar and cuffs, and not one but two sword belts that crossed at his chest. There was snow on his shoulder. She did not know why that should draw her attention, except it seemed vital she focus on something and she was not brave enough to shift her gaze the few inches to look at his face, even though she could feel he was looking at hers.

He asked, still in that accent that rolled its words thickly and yet seemed familiar somehow, “What’s your name?”

“Mary.” Why she had answered him that and not told him “Marie” she did not stop to analyze, counting it enough of an achievement she had answered him at all.

“Mary. Where is he?”

The snow on his shoulder was melting. It struck her as something impossible that this man, seemingly carved out of shadow and ice, could melt anything. It was the fire, of course, she thought, and her mind traveled an uneven course back in time to another fire, with both her brother and Sir Redmond Everard sitting before it, and Sir Redmond telling her of the man she knew as Jacques, whose affairs were of interest to King James. “This man is now sought by the English,” he’d told her, “and must be protected.”

Protected
. She clung to that word and its purpose—her purpose—although she could not think of what she could do to fulfill it.

The last snowflake melted to nothing against the gray wool and she looked from the place it had been to the eyes of the tall man in front of her, and though she still heard the fear in her own voice she forced out the words, “Where is who?”

When her uncle’s vines froze in the winter, the first morning light turned the edge of the ice a pale blue, a reflection of cold sky that had not yet thawed to the sun. This man’s eyes were exactly like that, Mary thought. Like a hard, killing frost.

When he frowned she flinched backwards in spite of herself, but his frown wasn’t aimed at her. Angling his head to the side, he appeared to be listening. He hadn’t made a move to touch her, his mere presence proving force enough to hold her in her place, and even when he took a step aside now Mary didn’t feel that she had been released. She kept her back pressed to the bolted door, as she had done from the beginning, and she barely dared to breathe.

She heard, above the lower whistle of the wind and the stern rattle of the window glass, the slightly mismatched clopping of a team of horses from the street. The sound drew nearer till she fancied she could hear the heavy roll of wheels behind.

The man said curtly, “Come.” And still not touching her or needing to, he motioned her to walk before him from the kitchen into the front entry hall. The horses’ hooves and rolling wheels drew level with the house and stopped, and never had a silence felt more ominous.

The man stopped too, and leaning close to Mary’s side said, “Do exactly as I say. Whoever knocks upon that door, you tell him you are in the house alone, and send him off again. Do not allow him in.”

He backed away from her and melted to the shadows of the wall, but she was very much aware of him when she first heard the scuff of booted footsteps and the almost lively knock. She did not wish to answer it at all, but she was more afraid of what was waiting at her back than of whatever lay beyond the door, and so she tried her best to gather her composure as she turned the handle, easing the door open just enough to show her face.

The man who stood on the front step looked reassuringly friendly. He was of middle age and height and rather handsome, in the wig and clothing of a gentleman. The carriage he’d arrived in was more handsome still, its driver sitting hunched upon the box, the horses steaming in the winter air. The man removed his hat and bowed and greeted her in French, “Madam, good morning. I am sent with an important message for Monsieur Vasseur, that I am told I must deliver to his hand.”

Her mind was racing with such speed it failed to register connections, and it took her half a moment to remember that “Monsieur Vasseur” was Jacques. And half a moment more to bring to mind what she’d been told to say, although she could not bring herself to say it, for she feared that by so doing she might send away their only hope of rescue.

Mary realized half in horror that the man upon the step was now advancing. He was smiling and his hand was on the outside of the door, and in that instant while she wavered without knowing what to do, he had stepped through somehow and joined her in the entry hall, completely unaware what danger waited for him there.

She panicked then and shook her head against the stranger’s cheerful smile and said, “You cannot be here. You must go.”

“Not yet.” He closed the door more gently than the man in gray had closed the kitchen door. This was a gentleman. His manners and his voice remained as charming as they had been on the step. He was still smiling when he locked the door, and when he drew the dagger. “Take me where he is, this man who calls himself Vasseur.”