Hearts Beguiled (14 page)

❧

Hachette thought at first it was the chime of the clock that brought him back to the present.

He sat up with an abrupt snort and glanced at the clock, to see it read straight up at midnight. The newspaper he had been reading before Louvois's visit slid off the polished desk top and onto the parquet floor. He bent over to pick it up, and that was when he saw the man standing by bis library door.

The scream stopped halfway from his mouth and turned into a curse instead. "The devil take you, you scoundrel. Can't you have yourself announced like everyone else?"

"It's late. I didn't want to wake your servants."

Maximilien de Saint-Just sauntered into the room, and against his will Hachette's scowl softened into a fond smile.

"I'm sorry, but you startled me," he said. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Obviously not. . . That's a sign of insanity, you know."

"Huh?"

"Bedlam is full of people who sit alone, chuckling inanely to themselves."

Hachette felt hot with embarrassment, realizing he must have been laughing out loud in his reverie. For a moment he wished he had arranged to have the police there waiting for the young brigand that day eleven years ago. It would have served the arrogant bastard right.

"I didn't expect you tonight, Max. I thought you were going aloft tomorrow morning in that fool balloon. Or have you come to your senses?"

"No ..." Distracted, Max pushed a hand through his thick hair. "No, I still intend to take her up tomorrow."

Hachette watched as Max paced the length of the room, to the windows and back again. The flickering light from the chandeliers fell obliquely on the young man's face, giving a feral gleam to his dark gray eyes. There was a wildness about his Black Angel tonight, Hachette thought. And an answering quiver of excitement rippled through Hachette, banishing his earlier embarrassment, even making him forget for a moment Louvois and the girl and the duc de Nevers.

"What is it, Max? What's happened?"

Max hooked his hip onto the edge of Hachette's rosewood desk. He toyed with the items on top—an enameled snuffbox, the quizzing glass, a horn-handled penknife—and Hachette noticed with shock that the young man's hands were shaking.

"Do you believe in hell?" Max asked abruptiy.

Hachette was not sure he believed in God, let alone such a thing as divine retribution, but he nodded automatically. "Of course."

A mocking smile twisted Max's lips. "So do I." He flung the penknife at the painted wall, piercing the eye of a cherub playing a harp. "Hell, my dear Abel, is a woman with hair the color of a sunset and purple eyes that see right through to your wicked, lustful soul."

The drawling words, so full of self-mockery, made little sense to Hachette. He was more concerned about the damage just done to his wall. He gave the younger man what he hoped was a censorious glare and, rising, went to pry the knife out of the cherub's eye. "I hope you haven't come here merely to debate theology, Max, because it's late and I'm rather tired—"

Max stood up. He plucked the knife from Hachette's hand and tossed it back on the desk. "I'm here because there's another load of salt being smuggled into the city the night after tomorrow," Excitement animated Hachette's face, and Max laughed softly. "I thought that might stir that reptilian blood of yours. By this time tomorrow I'll have the names of the leaders. If you're interested."

"You've penetrated the salt ring?" Hachette exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. "Splendid, my boy! Splendid. This particular mission is coming along better than I had hoped."

Max's lids lowered until his eyes were almost shut, and his mouth stretched into a lazy smile. His voice when he spoke was soft, and deadly. "You betray my . . . associates to the police, my dear Abel, and you betray me as well."

"No, no, of course I wouldn't do such a thing," Hachette protested, shaking his head so vigorously that his wig slipped. "The cabal doesn't want to stop the salt smuggling, Max. You know that. Why should we want to stop something that can only hurt the king and the fools who control his finances? No, no, we merely want to find out who's running the smuggling so that we may run them. And you will get your usual twenty—"

"No!" Max said quickly. "Not this time. This is the last mission I do for you, and I do it for nothing. Call it a parting gift."

"But—"

"Good night, Abel," Max said. And then he was gone, as swiftly and silently as he had arrived, leaving Hachette standing half out of his chair with a frozen smile on his face.

Parting gift?

Hachette sat down slowly, so stunned that for a moment he forgot to breathe. His Black Angel, his Black Angel was leaving—

It's the girl, he thought suddenly. The fool boy has gone and fallen in love with this mysterious highborn whore, this Gabrielle. Hair the color of a sunset. . . Hachette snorted. He should have recognized the signs sooner. And all that crazy talk tonight about hell being a woman. What else but love could have put such a haunted look on that arrogant face? The cocky young rake has fallen in love, and suddenly he's not good enough for his beloved and so must reform his whole life. The next thing we know, Hachette thought with a sharp laugh, the young fool will be joining the priesthood to atone for his sins.

Well, not if I can help it, Hachette promised himself. For the lawyer Louvois was right; the time was soon coming when the king and his noble lackeys would be overthrown, and there was not only liberty but a fortune to be made in the resulting chaos. Now, more than ever, Hachette and the cabal were going to need the services of someone to help them sail around the tricky shoals such an upheaval was bound to uncover. Someone dark and dangerous . . . Someone like his Black Angel.

"You belong to France, Maximilien de Saint-Just," Abel Hachette said aloud to the empty room. "To France and to history." And no mere woman was going to be allowed to alter the course of history.

❧

The great silken globe wafted in the breeze, its blue and gold stripes shining incandescent in the morning sunlight. Fully inflated now, it strained against its mooring ropes as if alive, like a huge beast struggling to burst free.

A wicker car, decorated with bright turquoise bunting, hung suspended from a cord net that covered the upper half of the balloon. Hatless and in shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, Maximilien de Saint-Just stood beside the car, checking the tautness of a cable that ran up the middle of the vessel's vast, gas-filled core.

"I say, Saint-Just," Percival Bonville drawled, limping up to him. Wearing yards of lace at his throat and a short coat decorated with frog buttons, Percy looked more like one of the young nobles who haunted the halls at Versailles than a rough-hewn American patriot. He waved his tasseled ebony cane at the wicker basket. "Are you sure you've no room in there for an extra passenger?"

Max looked up, giving him a slanted smile. "Sorry, Percy. The position's already been filled."

Pretending to be hurt by this rebuff, Percy turned his back on Max to survey the growing group of curious onlookers. Unlike Max's first experiment three years before (when he had helped finance the exorbitant cost of the balloon by charging the ton a louis apiece for the privilege of a close-up view of its ascent) there had been little advertisement for this one. Yet it could hardly have been kept a secret, and even Parisians weren't so jaded that such an event would fail to draw a crowd. There was always the exciting possibility that the balloon would explode, or fall out of the sky, and some good red blood would be spilled.

Then, too, a Parisian knew that a crowd meant there was money to be made. Percy spotted a man selling wine from a barrel on a cart, though it was barely two hours past sunrise. By his side was a woman selling waffles—half burned, by the smell of them.

Then Percy's eyes lit on the fetching sight of dazzling red-gold hair beneath a plumed bonnet. "Good God!" he exclaimed aloud as a thought struck him. He stared at Max. "You aren't seriously considering . . . ?"

Max's eyes glinted with devilment.

"Good God," Percy said again. "How on earth did you get her to agree to it?"

"I haven't actually asked her yet."

Percy's brows soared upward.

"But she will," Max said.

He hadn't actually looked at her yet, either, but he knew she was there. He had known from the moment she stepped out of the orchard onto the field. Just as he had known she would come, although last night, before they had parted, she had sworn to him that she would not.

Liar, he scolded himself with an inward laugh. You didn't know she was going to do any such thing. You only hoped. He figured he had as much chance of guessing what Gabrielle would do next as he did of winning the national lottery.

He couldn't understand why he was finding it so damned difficult to get this particular woman into his bed. She wasn't an innocent. She'd been married; she even had a child, for Christ's sake. Besides, he'd sported at the game of love with enough women over the years to know when a flirtation was ready to become something more. Hell, what was between him and Gabrielle had been ready to become something more the minute they first laid eyes on each other. It had never been a flirtation, even at the beginning, but an attraction of cosmic proportions. He wanted her desperately. And she wanted him, just as desperately. So what in bloody hell was stopping them?

As he bent over to heave a bag of sand into the balloon's wicker car, a sudden thought struck him with such force he groaned aloud.

Maybe she was holding out for marriage!

He groaned again, and Percy leaned over him solicitously. "I say, Saint-Just, did you strain something?"

Max straightened slowly, shaking his head. "No, I, uh, no, I'm fine." He took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweating brow. Marriage. He gritted his teeth. The devil will get frostbite in hell, Max swore violently to himself, before I take a woman to wife.

Marriage only ruined one of the greatest pleasures in life by wrapping it up with respectability and obligations. A man took a wife for three reasons—money, land, or lust. At least if you married for the first two, you got something tangible for your pains. Only a fool married for lust, which was shortlived and easily satisfied. As for love, which only women and poets believed really existed—

Max felt a hand on his arm. "Saint-Just, are you sure you're all right?"

Max looked into Percy's concerned face. "What?"

"You were shivering and gnashing your teeth. Maybe you hadn't better—"

"No, I'm fine. Uh, Percy? If I ever show the slightest inclination to go near a church, will you promise to stop me?"

Confusion wrinkled Percy's brow. "Church? Why ever would you—" His eyes widened and he threw a quick look at Gabrielle over Max's shoulder. Max still hadn't turned to look at her.

The American chuckled. "Sorry, Saint-Just, but you got yourself into this and you'll have to get yourself out. Personally, old friend, if I were you—though, praise God, I'm not— I'd grab her by the hand and drag her to the nearest priest as quickly as I could. Before I lost her to someone else."

Heavy lids fell over Max's eyes and his voice dropped into a silken purr. "Gabrielle is mine. "

An answering anger blazed from the American's dark eyes. "Spare me your jealous ravings, Saint-Just. I've never fancied redheads. They've too "much spirit for my tastes."

For a moment the two men glared at each other. Then Max sighed ruefully, running a hand through his hair. "Hell, Percy, I'm sorry. You see what she's doing to me? I'm about to go out of my mind."

Percy shook his head in sympathy. "Women. They've been nothing but trouble since Eve took off her fig leaf in the garden of Eden."

With Percy offering him a running commentary of unsolicited advice on how to handle women, Max checked everything one last time. He was giving some final instructions to his assistants when he heard his name called. He turned and saw Dominique and Simon walking toward him hand in hand.

"M'sieur Max!" Dominique cried again and, pulling his hand free of Simon's, came running up to meet him.

Max swung the boy in the air in a wide arc. "Go tell Monsieur Bonville I said you could climb into the car for a look around before I take her up."

Dominique grabbed Max's neck in a tight grip, and his blue eyes opened wide. "Can I really?"

"Didn't I just say so?"

"Don't tell Maman," Dominique whispered, his lips close to Max's ear.

"Why not?"

" 'Cause she might say I can't. Agnes says she's been as cranky as a wall bug all morning."

Laughing, Max swung the boy down onto his feet. "Off with you then. While she isn't looking."

With a squeal of delight, Dominique took off running toward the balloon. Simon followed behind him more slowly. Gabrielle had stayed where she was, beneath the shade of an orange tree on the fringe of the crowd.

As Simon passed, he nodded once at Max, and then his round face broke into a slow smile and he winked. "I thought you might want to know, Dominique and I have plans to go fishing this afternoon, and I've made Agnes stay home and mind the shop," Simon said, seemingly apropos of nothing. But it made Max laugh out loud. He continued to smile to himself as he rolled down his sleeves and put on his hat and coat. Then he turned and for the first time looked at Gabrielle.

She smiled shyly as he came up to her. She was so beautiful she brought a tightness to his throat that wouldn't let him breathe, let alone speak.

She wore a green taffeta gown adorned with beige muslin ruches arranged in flounces. The dress was obviously new and probably more expensive than she could afford. He wondered if she had bought it to impress him and was secretly pleased at the thought. Her bodice had a low, square decolle-tage, and she had for once left it uncovered by a fichu. He wanted to plant his lips between the shadowy hollow of her exposed breasts.

He kissed her hand instead. "Thank you for coming after all."

She flushed slightly. "I ... I decided I was being foolish."

"You were."

Her dark brows flared upward. "You needn't be so ungallant as to agree with me."

He laughed. "You really are as cranky as a wall bug this morning."

She tried to scowl at him, but her eyes betrayed her, crinkling with silent laughter at the corners. When her lower lip began to quiver, it was all he could do not to kiss it.

"I thought that by agreeing with you I would avoid an argument for a change," he said. "Are you always so hard to please? Or is it just me?" He had yet to let go of her hand. She tried to pull it free, but he held it fast. It trembled a moment, then was still. "Are you feeling adventuresome this morning?"

She looked at him, suspicion plain on her face. "Why do you ask?"

"Come with me, Gabrielle."

She looked confused for a moment. Then her eyes jerked over to the balloon and back to him. "Come with you! You must be—"

"—mad," he finished for her. "Come with me, Gabrielle. If I haven't raped you yet, I'm not likely to do so two thousand feet in the air."

"That isn't what I—two thousand feet!"

"It isn't dangerous. At least no more dangerous than crossing the Champs Ely sees on a Sunday afternoon. Simon will look after Dominique, and I promise to have you home by sunset." That last part was a lie, but he was counting on the fact that by sunset they would be sharing a bed in some village inn, and she would have other things on her mind besides hearth and home.

She was weakening. He could see it in her face. She was sucking on her lower lip in the delightful way she had that made him want to ravish her on the spot.

He brought his hand to her shoulder, trailing his fingers along the edge of it to the back of her neck. She wouldn't look at him, but he saw her swallow hard. He brought his face close to hers, his lips just brushing her cheek. "Gabrielle . . . Gabrielle. Come float across the sky with me."

She pulled away from him, and he thought he had failed, but she walked toward the balloon, her shoulders squared resolutely, and then she turned, flinging her head up in a challenge. "Are you coming, monsieur? Or are you afraid?"

Percy Bonville couldn't hide his amusement as Max led Gabrielle past the ropes and gendarmes that separated the balloon from the crowd.

"Good morning, Madame Prion," Percy said, bowing with his usual flourish. He started to bring her hand to his lips until he caught sight of the murderous scowl on Max's face. He bowed his head over it instead. "Has Saint-Just somehow managed to convince you to join him on this wild escapade?"

She smiled nervously. "He assures me it isn't dangerous."

Percy laughed. "Oh, the aerostat isn't dangerous. Not at all." He laughed again and winked at Max. "As long as you take care to steer clear of all churches."

Max took Gabrielle's arm and pulled her toward the balloon's wicker car. "Don't pay any attention to him. He's only jealous because he wants to come, too."

Simon had just convinced Dominique it was time to get out of the basket, and there was a bit of difficulty when the boy realized his maman was going to get to ride in the balloon without him. He insisted, in a very vocal way, on coming along as well, until Simon had to bribe him with an offer of gingerbread and a promise to go fishing not only that day but all the next afternoon, too.

With her full-panniered skirts and many petticoats, Gabrielle had considerable trouble—to Max's delight—climbing into the wicker car. It gave him a chance "accidentally" to brush his arm along her breasts as he helped her inside, and he got a tantalizing glimpse of a white silk stocking stretching thinly over an ankle so small he could easily span it with two fingers. A buzz of excitement rippled through the crowd when they realized a woman was about to join this crazy scientist Saint-Just in his mad experiment.

Once inside the car, Gabrielle looked around her, and he saw her eyes narrow suspiciously at the sight of the blankets and the basket of food and champagne.

She raised her brows at him. "You seem to have been expecting a passenger, monsieur."

"A good scientist provides for all contingencies," he countered, flashing his mocking smile.

She tilted her head back to gaze nervously at the yawning cavity of the colorful silken sphere. With an easy nonchalance, Max slipped an arm around her waist, then grinned to himself when she left it there.

"The theory," he said, "is that an envelope containing a substance lighter than air will rise until its weight matches that of the atmosphere around it."

A sudden gust rocked the great balloon, making it pull against its moorings. She looked at him with huge violet eyes, swallowing convulsively. Although they were still firmly anchored to the ground, she clutched the rim of the basket with rigid hands.

He smiled at her. "Don't be frightened."

She gave a shaky laugh. "I'm not frightened. I'm terrified. How . . . how do you make it work?"

"It's quite simple really. To go up we eliminate some of the ballast—that's weight." He kicked at a pile of sandbags that lay in a corner in the bottom of the car. "To descend, I pull on this cord here, which opens a valve at the top of the envelope, letting some of the gas escape. We're propelled through the air by the wind currents."