Hearts Beguiled (10 page)

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The hackney swayed as it jostled through the traffic on the Pont Neuf. Gabrielle stared out the window, pretending to be engrossed in a scene she had seen on countless occasions, although from time to time she would, steal glances at the man who sat across from her.

At her feet was wedged a wicker basket with the neck of a champagne bottle poking out the top. Dominique sat beside Max and kept up a constant stream of chatter, about balloons and rock collections and dancing bears, pausing only long enough for Max to contribute a comment or two before moving on to a new topic.

"He'll talk your ear off if you encourage him," she said apologetically.

"I don't mind," he answered with a grin that put a dimple in his cheek, making him appear boyishly young.

He looked breathtakingly handsome that morning, in a white waistcoat and a green dress jacket cut in the English country style, the white stock at his neck setting off his sun-browned skin. His suede breeches stretched tightly over the corded muscles of his thighs, and his tall, polished black boots emphasized the hard length of his calves. He was too beautiful not to look at, too beautiful not to want.

The hackney lurched around a corner, and Gabrielle grasped the strap to keep from falling off the seat. A wave of dizzy exhaustion engulfed her and she pressed her eyes shut. It serves you right, she told herself, for getting up in the middle of the night to chase after the stars, and drinking tea in a cafe" until the early morning hours. Yet when she was with him time ceased to have meaning. Reality was only his smile, his eyes, the silky echo of his voice.

Last night, as they had left the cafe, she hadn't even realized he was leading her to his end of the Palais Royal until they were almost outside his apartment door.

"We have hours yet before the sun fades away our stars," he had said in that impossibly seductive voice. "Will you spend them with me, Gabrielle?"

"No, I can't," she had protested, denying him, denying herself, though in truth a part of her had wanted him to take her in his arms and carry her up those stairs, to his bed.

She had tried to run from him then, from herself, but he had caught her hands fast in his, bringing them to his lips. "Tomorrow, ma mie," was all he had said.

Then he had escorted her back across the garden to the pawnshop and kissed her goodbye. But not on the mouth, as she had secretly wanted him to, but on the inside of her wrist. The feel of his lips, cool and firm, pressing against her sensitive flesh, had somehow left her feeling plundered, ravished.

Oh, but you are clever, she told him silently now. So clever to arouse her hunger and then leave her unsatisfied. It was a woman's trick, a seducer's ploy. I'll lie to you and I'll probably use you, he had said. She would do well to remember that.

The hackney pulled up before an imposing stone building. The driver opened the carriage door and let down the step. Max descended, then lifted Dominique to the ground. He took Gabrielle's arm to help her, and his hand lingered on her waist, guiding her toward the building's arched portals. It was a casual, polite gesture, nothing more, yet she was uncomfortably aware of the feel of his palm resting on the small of her back, the brush of his leg against her skirt, the nearness of his face. Though the sun beat down bright and hot on the stone steps, she shivered.

The Jardin des Plantes was the center of scientific French studies. Founded over a hundred and fifty years before, it housed laboratories and lecture halls, rooms full of rare collections and greenhouses overgrown with exotic plants. Its botanical groves and gardens stretched for acres down to the Seine.

As they entered a giant hall, Dominique clapped his hands with delight. Odd-looking anatomical specimens in jars lined the walls. Tables were loaded with sextants and quadrants, crucibles and alembics. A giant armillary sphere dominated the center of the room. Sunlight streamed in from a row of tall arched windows to light even the far back comer, where a skeleton dangled from a rope fastened to a hook in the wall.

"Look, Maman!" Dominique exclaimed, heading unerringly for the skeleton. "That man has lost all his skin!"

"Dominique," Gabrielle called out in vain as he raced down the length of the room. "Don't touch anything."

"I see the boy has gone to make the acquaintance of Old Bones," Max said on a note of amusement that burst into full laughter at Gabrielle's shudder of revulsion.

The hall was full of men, many of whom greeted Max by name. Several eyed Gabrielle with unabashed curiosity. One man, braver than the others, limped over with the help of a cane, an infectious smile creasing his round, apple-cheeked face.

"Saint-Just, you devil, so this is what's been keeping you so occupied lately. I might have known!" His chocolate-brown eyes moved appreciatively over Gabrielle, then he bowed with an exaggerated flourish. "Your very devoted servant, mademoiselle."

Max introduced her as Madame Gabrielle Prion. "Gabrielle, may I present Percival Bonville, a not-so-famous American patriot and the man who proved that lightning is actually electricity . . . and only a mere two months after Benjamin Franklin did it."

The man laughed heartily. "Unfair, unfair, Saint-Just. I would have beaten old Uncle Ben to it if I hadn't been so preoccupied with, er, other matters."

He took Gabrielle's hand and placed it on the crook of his arm. "He's brought you here to show off his aerostat, I'll Wager. Come, come, Madame Prion, we might as well feed his conceit by going out there to gape at it with looks of rapturous wonder on our faces."

Laughing, Gabrielle glanced back over her shoulder at Max as she was pulled toward a pair of doors that opened onto the gardens. "Max, would you—"

He waved them on. "Go ahead. I'll fetch the boy."

The gardens were a painter's palette of colors. Beds of flowers and rows of blooming bushes stretched before her like a scrap quilt—too abundant and too vibrant for the eyes to absorb fully. She paused to admire a vivid green bush resplendent with huge white blossoms and a heavy floral aroma.

She cast a questioning look at Percival Bonville, who brought a handkerchief to his nose. "Don't ask me what species it is," he said, his voice muffled by the cloth. "I know nothing about plants except that the prettier they are the more the blasted things seem to reek like the inside of a bordello."

Gabrielle laughed gaily, charmed by Max's friend. Though he was not especially good-looking, there was something attractive about the way he spoke, with his drawling American accent.

She took his arm again and they turned, walking toward the river. The sun blazed down relentlessly; Gabrielle began to wish she hadn't rushed from the shop without bringing her fan.

"Have you been in France long, Monsieur Bonville?" she asked.

"Call me Percy. Actually, you know of Benjamin Franklin, no doubt? He's an uncle of mine. I joined up with him here after the war." He tapped his foot with the end of his cane. "That's where I picked up this bum leg. Fighting the blasted English."

"I've heard of your Monsieur Franklin, of course, though I've never met him," she lied, for the man had once been a frequent habitue at her mother's salon. The niece of a simple pawnshop owner would, on the other hand, have had little opportunity to meet the illustrious Monsieur Franklin.

The American patriot had come to France several years before to seek French aid for their revolution. He became a popular figure both at Paris and at the court of Versailles and stayed, even after the American war ended. She remembered that the old man had been a bit of a roue and a great admirer of the ladies.

As if guessing her thoughts, the American smiled slyly and leaned intimately toward her. "Every word you've heard about my uncle is unabashedly true, Madame Prion. Every word. And what's more, it runs in the family."

They passed through an orchard of citrus trees and into a broad meadow.

"Oh!" Gabrielle exclaimed, sucking in a sharp breath of wonder. Holding on to her hat, she tilted her head back to look up.

Strung between two masts by a cable that ran through a ring at its top bobbed a great blue and gold silken balloon. Although only partially inflated, the envelope was already as tall as a five-story building. At its base was a row of casks interconnected with pipes made of tin. A pair of men worked busily around the casks, from which there came a strange bubbling noise.

Percy chuckled softly. "Magnificent, isn't it? Ah, to sail such a ship through the heavens! Perhaps I can talk Saint-Just into taking me with him. He owes me a favor or two."

"Have you known Max long?" Gabrielle asked, realizing suddenly that here was someone who could shed light on the mysterious Maximilien de Saint-Just.

"Long enough to know that his is one of the greatest scientific minds your country possesses. Do you know that in just this year alone he has discovered two new satellites of

Saturn and the phenomenon of double stars?" He waved a hand at the colorful globe that swayed lazily in the hot breeze. "Not to mention the work he is doing with hydrogen-filled balloons."

Gabrielle shook her head, surprised and, yes, impressed. Yet she had known from the first that Maximilien de Saint-Just was not at heart the aristocratic dilettante he pretended to be.

"He could accomplish so much," Percy was saying, "but instead he plays with science and wastes his talents. Not to mention the way he risks his very life by indulging in those dangerous and nefarious games of his. He's like a great galleon being tossed about on a storm-whipped sea." Percy paused and turned to face her. "He needs a safe harbor."

Gabrielle's chest felt tight, and she couldn't meet the American's eyes. She looked at the balloon instead, wondering what sort of dangerous and nefarious games Maximilien de Saint-Just played at. "I'm not sure I understand."

Percy shrugged a pair of elegantly clad shoulders. "I'm not sure I do, either. But I do know this. There have been many women in Max's life, but you're the first one he's ever bothered to bring here—"

"Maman!"

Max emerged from the orchard with Dominique riding on his shoulders. Her son's fists were wrapped in the man's dark hair; his face was flushed with laughter. He reared back his head and took in the sight of the balloon with eyes as round as carriage wheels.

"It's big," he stated matter-of-factly, which caused them all to laugh.

Max set Dominique on the ground and, taking his hand, led him closer to the giant balloon. It seemed to be groaning as it pulled upward against the cables that kept it tethered.

Gabrielle followed behind a little nervously. "It isn't dangerous, is it?"

"Nonsense!" Percy admonished.

Max gave her that beguiling, damn-the-world grin, and Gabrielle felt something tug at her heart.

"Gabrielle happened to witness one of my rare failures," he said, "and now she won't let me forget it."

He hunkered down beside Dominique and began to explain how the sealed casks around the base of the balloon were filled with sulfuric acid to which the workers added iron filings to produce the gas that was inflating the envelope. Gabrielle knew Dominique could understand little of what Max said, but his eyes bounced back and forth between Max and the balloon, a look of rapt attention on his face, his pudgy fist clinging securely to the sleeve of Max's coat.

He needs a father, she thought, and then instantly regretted the foolish, useless yearning.

She looked up to find Percy Bonville's eyes on hers and was afraid for a moment that she had spoken the thought aloud, for he smiled and nodded knowingly.

Then he turned abruptly aside and tapped Max's thigh with his cane. "When do you take her aloft, Saint-Just?"

"She should be fully inflated in another couple of days." Max straightened, brushing dirt off his knees. "It takes at least a week to create enough hydrogen gas by this process," he explained to Gabrielle. "Someday I hope to invent a faster way."

Dominique grasped Max's hand, swinging himself off the ground. "Take me with you, M'sieur Max. Take me up in that 'stat with you."

"Not this time. Someday, perhaps. When you're older."

"Promise?"

"It's hard to promise things too far ahead." Max searched Gabrielle's face, his own expression unreadable. "It all depends on your maman."

What was he really saying to her? Unsure, she mumbled, "We'll see."

Max, his mouth set into a hard line, turned away from her.

They looked at the balloon in silence—except for Dominique, who raced in a giant circle around it. Then Max suggested they walk back by way of the menagerie so that Dominique could see the animals. "I've arranged for some refreshment under the shade of the peach orchard. You're welcome to join us, Percy."

"Thank you, but no. Though it hurts my pride to admit it, I think that in this rare instance I would be de trap. " Grinning broadly, he presented them both with another flourishing bow. "Au revoir, madame . . . May the wind be at your back, Saint-Just." He winked conspiratorially at Gabrielle. "And all your harbors be safe."

Max stared after the American as he limped away. "What was that all about?"

Gabrielle pretended not to hear. She snatched her son's arm as he raced by. "Really, Dominique!" she scolded. "It's too hot to be dashing about like that."