Hearts Beguiled

HEARTS BEGUILED

"Monsieur," Gabrielle said suddenly, "I believe your montgolfier is about to burst."

His lips twisted into a tough, damn-the-world smile. "You know, mademoiselle, I believe you are right." He threw himself at her, knocking her to the floor just as a tremendous explosion shook the building. The walls rattled and the floor shivered. There was an echoing rumble, a final tinkle of a falling mirror, then silence.

Gabrielle opened her eyes. He lay on her, the full length of him covering the full length of her. His chest flattened her breasts, his stomach pressed against hers. One of his thighs was braced between her legs. His face was very close.

"Your experiment seems to have been something of a disaster, monsieur," she said, shaky and breathless.

"On the contrary. . .it was"—his voice drifted into a low, silky purr—"a shattering success."

1783

A
fter twenty years of owning a pawnshop in the raucous neighborhood of the Palais Royal, Simon Prion had seen it all. Whatever they brought in to pawn—a grandmother's diamond necklace, a father's sword, the silver buckles from last year's shoes—it all came down to the same thing. They were pledging their last hope, the final piece of a broken dream.

But not this girl ... He wanted her to be different.

He had been watching her for a good hour now. His shop was in the new Galerie de Valois, to the right of the ducal palace. Facing his front door and window were the gardens. On a fair day the gardens and arcades of the Palais Royal filled with people. Beggars and balladeers, dukes and cobblers—they all came there eventually. For the Palais Royal was the center of Paris and Paris was the center of the world, and it was there they came to broker their dreams.

But not this day. On this day the sky was a smudged gray, the color of soot. The wind was damp and cold, rustling the few withered leaves that still clung stubbornly to the branches of the chestnut trees. Occasionally the wind gusted against the sign above his shop—the three golden balls of the pawnbroker—making it groan. Although it was only November, ice ringed the edges of the puddles that formed in the depressions of the dirt paths and cobbled streets.

And there was no one in the gardens but the girl.

She paced the path directly across from his shop. Occasionally she would pause and glance his way, and Simon would think that at last she was coming, but instead she would resume her pacing. Whatever dream she was being forced to sell, she was finding it hard to part with.

Curiosity brought Simon to his cluttered window where he could see her better. Her tall, slight frame, enveloped by a large black manteau, appeared vulnerable, fragile. Yet this was no provincial shopkeeper's daughter or peasant girl. She had a certain way of standing, a proud way of holding her head, that could only have been acquired through centuries of noble breeding. And the style and flair of her cloak, her self-contained yet purposeful movements—she was, without doubt, Paris born and raised.

From this distance her face looked pale and unmarked by the pox. The bones were boldly sculptured, with a strong chin, broad forehead, and dark, flaring brows. As he stared at her, the wind pulled a tendril of hair from the hood of her cloak, plastering it against her cheek. It was the color of a flame.

She stopped pacing suddenly and turned to stare boldly at the shop.

Simon stumbled away from the window, almost knocking an Oriental vase priced at twenty livres off its stand. His face felt warm. He was acutely aware of how he must appear—a man well past middle age with too much flesh and too little hair, caught peeping out the window at a pretty girl.

He sucked in a sharp breath. She was coming.

But at the last moment she veered to the left, toward the palace gates. Simon stood in the gloomy shadows within his shop and watched her figure pass the window and disappear. She was not coming after all, and he felt an inexplicably fierce ache of disappointment.

Without looking, without really thinking, Simon pulled off his smock and snatched a coat from the racks that lined one wall of his shop. His left arm was through one sleeve and his right hand was reaching for the latch when the door was flung open in his face, cracking him hard across the bridge of his nose.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!"

A black, blurred figure loomed before him. Simon blinked back tears of pain and his eyes refocused. It was the girl.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I wasn't watching where I____"

He lifted his hand to his throbbing nose and noticed a strange and distastefully gaudy coat dangling from the end of his arm.

"I thought I would go out for . . ."

He tried to cram the considerable rest of himself into the coat, then realized that in his hurry he had grabbed one that was at least two sizes too small.

"That is, I don't really need to go out just now ..."

His words trailed off. He stood before her, half in and half out of the ugly coat, and his nose hurt and his cheeks burned.

But she wasn't looking at him; she was looking slowly around the shop. "Where is Monsieur Prion?" she said after a moment.

He started. "I'm Prion. But how did you know my name?"

She turned to face him and he found himself looking into strange, mesmerizing eyes of so dark a blue they were purple. Though she was very young those eyes held a bitter wisdom far beyond her years.

She smiled then. It was sweet but strained, as if she hadn't smiled in a long, long time. "Your sign above the door. It says: Simon Prion, Proprietor."

He laughed shakily. "Oh, of course. How stupid. . ."He knew he was mumbling and blushing again. He felt foolish, and normally he didn't like to be made to feel foolish. But he wasn't angry; the girl intrigued him.

He peeled off the ridiculous coat and flung it into a corner, men made a graceful bow. "I trust I may be of some small assistance, mademoiselle."

She stared at him. "I have something to pawn ..."

She paused, but Simon said nothing. He hoped she wasn't going to pledge her manteau. He wouldn't be able to offer her a good price for that. He had too many coats and cloaks as it was, and besides, winter was only just starting and already it was cold. She would need her manteau.

"Tell me, Monsieur Prion," she said. Her voice was soft and, unlike her eyes, innocent. "Do many of your customers come back later to redeem the things they have sold?"

"But of course," he lied. "All the time. You wouldn't actually be selling your, er, the item, you understand. Merely pledging it as collateral against a loan equal to its value." To half its value, he amended silently. And not counting, of course, the interest.

She drew in a deep breath, as if making a decision. Then with an impatient gesture, she pushed the hood of her cloak off her head. Her hair fell down her back. It was thick and long, almost to her waist. Simon had heard of hair of such a color—blond venitien, they called it. It was the color of young strawberries, just barely ripened.

She wrenched at a large ring on the middle finger of her left hand. It stuck a moment on the knuckle, for her fingers were slightly swollen, no doubt from the cold. Finally it came off, and she thrust it at him as if suddenly she couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

He took it and went behind a broad, low desk to examine it by the flickering light of a silver candelabra. He fixed a magnifying lens into his eye.

"It's gold," she stated.

Simon grunted.

"And the jewels are genuine. A sapphire and rubies."

Simon sighed.

It was an antique piece, at least a hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred, years old. A two-carat sapphire mounted in a bed of half-carat rubies in a setting of filigreed gold. Very recently an inscription had been etched on the inside of the worn band. For G, Love M. Who was M? he wondered— her lover, her husband? Perhaps the ring was a family heirloom, passed down from mother to daughter. Or perhaps she had stolen it, or bought it from another pawnshop during a happier, richer time. He sighed because he would never know.

"How much will you give me for it?" she asked.

He looked up, expecting her face to be sad, but it was hard. Beautiful and young, but hard.

"Fifteen louis d'or, at-twenty percent interest," he said.

She reached for the ring, but his fist closed over it. "Anywhere else, you would only get ten."

"But it's worth twice that much!"

"Sentimentally, perhaps. The gold is of inferior quality and the sapphire is flawed. Even as an antique it's worth twenty louis at the most. And a loan on fifty percent of the value is standard."

Her eyes flickered away from his. She knows that, he thought. She has done this many times before.

"I'll give you fifteen louis for it. Anyone else would only give you ten," he repeated gently, pretending to believe in her innocence because he wanted to. "If you can't pay off the loan to redeem the ring, I'll be forced to sell it And we pawnbrokers must live, too; we must show a profit, however small. I have a wife and children to feed," he added. Another lie.

Her soaring brows drew together over those worldly violet eyes. "Then why are you being so generous with me?"

"Because . . ." He shrugged, smiled. "Because you are young. And pretty."

Her face revealed nothing, but she pulled her hand off the desk top. "How long do I have to redeem it?"

"Six months."

She smiled then, that fleeting, strained smile. "Six months is a long time, monsieur. You are indeed very generous."

Simon Prion shrugged and blushed again. What could he tell her? That she reminded him of his daughter, except that he had never had a daughter, never married. That if she had been his daughter, he would have cared for her so that she wouldn't need to pledge any broken dreams.

But since she wasn't his daughter, he pulled out a battered strongbox, opened it with a key, and began to count out fifteen louis. She took a step toward him, and he glanced up. The front fold of her cloak caught on the corner of the desk, pulling the heavy material aside. Simon's eyes widened with shock.

For beneath stiff black taffeta skirts, the girl's stomach bulged with a pregnancy near the end of its term.

❧

An icy gust scattered raindrops among the dead chestnut leaves in the gardens of the Palais Royal. Gabrielle de Vauclair de Nevers clutched at the folds of her long woolen coat and bent into the wind. There was a dull, throbbing pain in the small of her back. She was aware of it, but she didn't really feel it.

The purse was heavy in her hand. For weeks it had been empty, but now she had fifteen gold louis. If she lived frugally, the money would last a long time. It would have to.

She did not think about what she had done to get the fifteen louis, or of what she would do when the money ran out. She had nothing more to pledge. She didn't pretend to herself that in six months she would redeem the ring. The ring was gone forever. Just as the man who had given it to her was gone.

Forever.

She crossed the wide-open square of the Place du Carrousel. The wind tugged at her skirts and blew dust in her eyes. Soon the rain would turn the dust to black, sticky mud.

The wind brought with it the odor of crepes frying on a hot griddle, and her stomach cramped with hunger. She hadn't eaten in two days. Her steps faltered a moment, but then she saw that the crepe vendor was already buttoning down bis stall against the weather, and she went on.

She walked along the quay toward the Pont Neuf. Below her churned the murky waters of the river Seine. The fires of beggars and vagabonds flickered in the shadowy darkness beneath the stone parapets.

There wasn't much traffic on the bridge. The mountebanks and toothdrawers had sought shelter from the rain. Most of the shops and stalls, even the shooting galleries, had closed for the day for lack of customers. She had almost reached the opposite bank when she heard the rattle of iron wheels on cobblestones. Automatically she drew aside to avoid being splattered with mud thrown up by the coming carriage.

She glanced behind her. It was a ponderous, slow-moving berlin, finished a dull black and pulled by four dark horses. She felt a sudden, sharp quiver of fear.

Silly fool, she berated herself. There were a hundred such vehicles in Paris.

Still, she quickened her pace. The berlin drew abreast of her and seemed to slow. The postilions, she saw, were liveried in black and gold. Reluctantly, as if pulled by invisible reins, she turned her head.

A long, slack hand pushed open the leather curtain on the carriage window. For a moment Gabrielle stood frozen, staring into dark, protruding eyes magnified by thick spectacles and a pale face marred by a raw scar on one cheek. The man's eyes blinked, and then his thin mouth stretched into a smile of recognition. And triumph.

Gabrielle ran.

"Gabrielle!" the man in the carriage shouted. "Wait! I only want to talk with you!"

She ran harder. She heard more shouts, the jangle of harness, the clatter of hooves on stone. Driven by panic, she flew across the quay and plunged into the warren of narrow streets, alleys, and courtyards that was the quarter of the butchers.

Her heavy belly made her clumsy, and several times she almost fell. The rain came down harder now, but away from the river the wind was less fierce. She ducked into a dark, narrow passage and almost gagged from the smell. Her feet squished on something soggy as she ran. She told herself it was only piles of entrails thrown out the door of one of the butcher shops.

The end of the passage opened onto steep stairs that led to another street below. Gabrielle paused, her breath sawing painfully in her throat. The stone steps, slippery from the rain, looked treacherous.

"This way!" she heard someone call out, followed by the pounding of running feet. The streets were too narrow for the heavy berlin, but he had sent his lackeys after her on foot.

Gabrielle plunged recklessly down the stairs.

Her feet flew out from under her. Stifling a cry, she grabbed desperately at the stones with her fingers. Her nails ripped and pain shot up her arms, but she managed to regain her balance. Down she plunged, into unknown blackness below.

The stairs ended in the yard of a posting house. Skirting a pile of steaming manure, Gabrielle pushed through a threesome of foraging pigs and slipped into the back door of a nearby shop. The pungent, acrid odor of wine filled her nostrils.

She walked quickly past towering rows of casks and pyramided bottles and out the front door. Nobody had seen her.

Outside, she leaned against the wall, struggling to catch her breath. The sounds of pursuit had faded. There was a sharp, stabbing pain in her side; her heart pounded heavily in her chest. She shut her eyes for a few precious seconds, fighting waves of dizziness.

Louvois. She said his name to herself, hating him.

He had said he only wanted to talk with her, but he lied. She pressed her hand against the child within her. She knew what he would do to her, to them both, if he caught her.

And he wouldn't give up easily.

She looked around, trying to get her bearings. Across the street a light flickered deep within the cavernous doors of a print shop. Water poured from the open gutter spouts and lanterns creaked overhead; they hung from ropes and wires, strung between the leaning tenement roofs. Although it was late afternoon and growing dark, few of the candles were lit.

She knew where she was. Weaving with exhaustion, she ran two more blocks and turned onto the Rue de la Huchette. The lackeys, in their fancy black and gold livery, wouldn't dare follow her here.

Dark figures flitted restlessly in the shadows of the doorways and abutments. Gabrielle's fingers wrapped tighter around her purse and she pulled her manteau close to her, but it was done more out of prudence than fear. Five months before, in her old life, she would have been terrified of the thieves, cutpurses, and cloak-snatchers who haunted this narrow, mean street. Now she was one of them.

The driving rain sent the day's accumulated refuse swirling down the central gutter in the street to clog the drains. Wide pools of stinking, dirty water began to form. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Jacques, one enterprising young man had fashioned a small portable bridge on wheels.

"Dry crossing!" he called out. "Two sous!"

He saw Gabrielle. Removing a battered, dripping tricorne, he bowed low, grinning. "For you, my sweetness, I will charge but a kiss."

Gabrielle ignored him, stepping almost indifferently into the filthy rushing water.

"Snooty bitch!" the young man called after her. "I hope you drown!"

When she reached the church of Saint-Severin, she stopped, pressing into the doorway to get out of the worst of the rain. Her woolen manteau was soaked through. It was very cold.

She fumbled beneath her skirts with numbed, bleeding fingers and ripped off a piece of petticoat. She removed all but two of the coins from her purse and wrapped them in the piece of cloth. Pulling aside her manteau and fichu, she shoved this makeshift package down her bodice into the hollow between her breasts. She smiled to herself at the irony: a year ago she had bewailed her small size. Now it was a blessing.

Martin had said—on the night she had first shown him her naked body—that her breasts were just the right size. With wonder on his face, he had reached out and touched them, caressed them until her nipples grew hard beneath his probing fingers, and—

No, she thought. I can't think of that. Maybe later, when I'm stronger, when I'm safe, but not yet . . .

The stitch in her side was gone now, but the pain in her back was much worse. She thought the baby must be pressing against her spine. Her stomach felt huge, distended beyond all the laws of nature. Above her, the bell in the tower began to toll the hour for vespers. For a moment she leaned against the church door and shut her eyes. But it was too cold and wet. More than anything she wanted to lie down.

The door to the church creaked open, and a priest, crooked with age, emerged. He paused when he saw her.

"Are you ill, my child?" he asked kindly.

"No, Father."

"It's cold. You should be home before the fire on an evening such as this one."

"Ca ira. Father," Gabrielle said, and forced a smile.

The priest nodded and raised a bent hand in a blessing before making his slow, doddering way down the shallow steps.

It will be all right, Gabrielle repeated to herself, using the words as a talisman.