Hearts Beguiled (15 page)

"Oh," she said on an expulsion of breath, and her voice quivered a little. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

He didn't dare tell her he had yet to discover a way to control their direction. He could get them up and he could get them down, but what happened in between was pretty much up to the wind gods.

The wicker car swayed gently again, and Gabrielle let out a tiny squeak.

"It won't tip over," Max said, although he used the excuse of her fear to hold her tighter against him. He brought his lips close to her ear. "You're perfectly safe with me. I promise."

Her mouth curled softly. "Oh, Max, you are such a shameless liar."

The wind tugged loose a tendril of her hair. It brushed back and forth across his cheek until she tucked it behind her ear. Turning slightly, she looked up at him through the veil of her lashes, though one hand still clung tightly to the rim of the car. He covered that hand and it fluttered once, like a trapped bird, then was still.

"Trust me," he said.

She sucked in a sharp breath. "I dare not."

"You've no other choice. You've come too far to turn back now."

She was silent for so long that he had opened his mouth to speak again when she turned full around to face him. She let go of the basket, and slipping her hand into his the way a child would, she forced a brave smile that tugged at his heart.

He squeezed her hand. "Are you ready, ma mie?"

"Yes," she said, and laughed suddenly. "But remember your promise to behave yourself."

"I don't remember making such a promise." He grinned at her. "Besides, you know what a shameless liar I am."

One of his assistants launched a small emerald-colored balloon to test the wind, and then Max gave the signal to release the mooring ropes.

Simon held Dominique above the heads of the surging crowd, and Gabrielle waved, calling out his name. He waved back so vigorously he knocked Simon's hat off. Max jettisoned the anchoring ballast and, with cheers from the crowd wafting over them, the balloon rose above the grounds and academy buildings of the Jardin des Plantes and floated out over the river Seine.

He tossed a few more sandbags into the water below, and they rose higher still as the rooftops of Paris sailed past beneath them.

Max came to stand close beside Gabrielle, and she turned to him, a look of rapturous wonder on her face.

"Oh, Max, it's so beautiful. You can see the whole world from up here!" she cried.

"And you ..." He brushed her face with his knuckles, following the curve of a cheekbone into her hair. "You are more beautiful than the world. Gabrielle—"

She turned away from him. "Max, please . . . You're making me feel silly." Though the air was balmy, she shivered slightly and chafed her arms. "Look," she said, pointing below where a bevy of ducks took off from the river, skimming over the water. "From here they look no bigger than skitter bugs."

Max smiled to himself as he moved away from her again to vent the hydrogen, slowing the balloon's ascent. They floated over the city wall where carts and wagons lined up to pass through the barriires and then, within minutes it seemed, they were out in the country, and the black and gray of the teeming streets and tenements of Paris became rolling green fields dotted with clumps of trees and brush. Here and there a road sliced across the earth like a thin scar, connecting the clay and wattle farms. He saw a windmill, and he had the incredible feeling he could reach down and set it to spinning with a godlike flick of his finger.

And then, in the great, enveloping silence, Max heard the sound of laughter, and he turned to see that it came from Gabrielle.

She removed her plumed bonnet and, leaning back, threw back her head as if in supplication to the wide blue sky above them. The sun set her hair ablaze like a candle flaring suddenly in a dark room, and her lips parted in a soft sigh.

Then she straightened and looked at him with those dark violet eyes, and he saw a yearning in them, a yearning that both terrified and drew him. She was all he had ever wanted, all he needed. She was Gabrielle, his Gabrielle.

And he was a fool, the worst kind of fool—one who lied to himself. For he realized with a sudden, sharp pain that was like a jabbing blow to his gut...

He loved her.

I
love you. The words seared across her mind like a brand as she gazed into his smoldering eyes, eyes that were the dark gray of a thunderstorm.

A violent, dangerous thunderstorm.

I don't care, I don't care. I love you.

Abruptly she turned away from him, trying to lose herself in the wonder that she was floating suspended in air like a cloud, so high that the sheep and cows in the pastures below resembled the ceramic barn animals that were part of the creche she had played with as a child. Fields of wheat and mustard spread over the countryside in haphazard, colorful patches, like a ragpicker's clothes. They drifted toward a village in the hazy distance, the gilded cross of its church steeple flashing in the sun. A silver liver slashed like a wound across the fields-He touched her.

"Gabrielle."

He touched her, laying his fingers on her bare arm, and it was like holding a torch to wax, as if her flesh would melt beneath the heat of his hand.

I can't bear this, she thought.

His fingers moved up her arm, encircled her elbow, drew her around. Stop, she pleaded silently. Stop . . . Don't stop, don't—

He kissed her. A full, strong kiss that plumbed her depths and took of her all she had to give, and more. Draining her until she could not stand up, so that she leaned back against the side of the car and clung to the ruffled lawn of his shirt. She felt his flesh through the thin material begin to shudder in ripples like waves curling along a beach.

When, too soon, he released her mouth, she was afraid of what he would see in her face, and so she turned her head aside. Her chest ached and she felt dizzy, and then she remembered to start breathing again. The darkness around the edges of her vision faded and she could see.

She saw the swaying treetops of a stand of pines below and the thatched roofs of the village, the church steeple with its shiny gold cross . . . Was it just her imagination, or was the steeple getting taller? And the ducks, those ducks that had seemed as tiny as skitter bugs before were definitely as big as field mice now. Could it be possible they were—

"Max!" She pulled away from him and lunged for the edge of the car. "Max, we're sinking!"

Max looked down. "Dear me," he said.

Dear me?

They were plunging to their deaths and all the madman could say was Dear me! Gabrielle wanted to hit him. Except she would have to let go of the curved edge of the wicker passenger gallery to do it, and nothing on earth was going to pry her hands loose of their fierce grip.

She squeezed her eyes shut instead. She felt the car sway as Max moved about, hurling the remaining bags of sand overboard. It slowed their descent, but not by much.

Gabrielle risked a peek. She saw wreathing pine branches beckoning to her like witches' claws. She tried to make her voice sound calm. "Max, we're still going down rather too fast, don't you think?"

He was staring up within the cavity of the balloon, frowning. "There's a leak in one of the seams on the envelope."

"I'm delighted to hear you know what's causing it," Gabrielle said through gritted teeth. "Now will you be so good as to fix it, please."

"I can't."

She sucked in a deep breath, determined not to disgrace herself by losing control and shouting at him. "Well, why don't we turn around then and sail back toward Paris?" she said, her voice falsely bright. "There are trees here, Max. And a steeple."

His eyes flickered away from her. "I can't do that either."

"Mon Dieu . . . If we're killed, Maximilien de Saint-Just, I'll never have anything more to do with you. You and these aerostats of yours that either blow up or start leaking at the most inconvenient moments—"

"We won't be killed." He heaved the food basket, champagne bottles, and blankets all overboard. Gabrielle Watched them fall into a turnip field below. At least they were beyond most of the trees now, but the village still loomed ahead. As if it possessed a mischievous will of its own, the wind was sending them directly toward the church with its tall steeple. She could read the face of the clock—both hands pointed straight up at twelve. And as if on cue a bell began to peal the hour.

"There may be a bit of a jolt when we hit the ground," Max was saying in a maddeningly cheerful voice, and he even had the audacity to give her an encouraging smile.

Gabrielle glared back at him.

"We'll have to lighten our load as much as possible," Max said, pulling off his coat and cocked hat and sending them over the side as well.

He stepped up to Gabrielle. His arms reached out, and she thought he was going to embrace her. Still clinging to the rim of the car, she sidestepped around him like a matador taunting a bull. "Max! How could you even think of doing that at a time like this?"

He lunged for her, grabbing her waist with one hand while the other reached up under her skirts and began to tug at the strings that attached her petticoats to her corset. "Will you, for Christ's sake, Gabrielle, quit squirming," he growled at her.

Gabrielle was so astonished she went completely still. Obviously his mind had come unhinged with lust—their aerostat was falling like a stone out of the sky and instead of trying to stop it he was attempting to rip her clothes right off her body!

She pounded her fists against his chest. "Let go of me this instant. I refuse to let you make love to me when we're about to be killed!"

The madman was actually laughing. He had also somehow inserted his fingers between her chemise and her bate flesh, and in spite of impending death, Gabrielle felt her stomach muscles start to quiver.

"Ahhh!" She groaned aloud and swayed into him, shutting her eyes.

"Gabrielle, ma mie, you are absolutely irresistible when you do that," Max said between gasping breaths. "But now isn't the time. Help me take off your pannier and your petticoats. We'll need to throw them overboard. All of them."

Since she would have to relinquish her grip on the basket to stop him, Gabrielle let Max rip all her underthings from beneath her skirts. The three petticoats and the split hip hoops made of osier reeds were quite heavy, and their absence did noticeably slow the balloon's descent.

But not enough. "Shoes, too," he said, plucking them off her feet, and then her stockings for good measure. Then, leaning against the wall of the car, he managed with a lot of grunting and grimacing to yank off his tight black leather boots. His boots and stockings followed hers overboard.

He sighed as he watched them fall. "The devil. I paid over a hundred livres for those boots."

Gabrielle swallowed a sob at the thought of all the money she had spent on her gown and its accoutrements, bought solely to dazzle and tantalize a certain mad, impossible scientist. She had imagined him taking off those three frothy, and expensive, petticoats one by one—

"Gabrielle ..."

Tearing her fascinated attention away from the rapidly approaching church steeple, she turned her head to find Max regarding her speculatively.

"What—?" she began, and then her eyes widened with horror as she guessed his intent. She whirled around, actually letting go of the basket to fling her arms protectively across her breasts. "You wouldn't dare!"

"But that dress of yours must weigh at least—"

She pointed a shaking finger at his middle. "I'll see you naked long before me, Maximilien de Saint-Just. Off with those breeches."

He gave her a smoldering look that promised if she didn't cooperate she would be the next thing tossed overboard. "Gabrielle, dammit, be reasonable—"

"Reasonable! Why you—" The steeple reared up before her eyes, so close she could count the individual red slates in its roof. "Oh, mon Dieu," she cried softly and made the sign of the cross.

The basket swung about, grazing the slates, lurching and tipping onto its end. Gabrielle screamed as she was hurled across the bottom of the car to slam against the hard wicker side.

Her skirts were flung over her head, and for a moment her world was a dark and silent shroud. Fighting off waves of panic, she clawed the stiff material away and looked up into the sad face of a huge gold Christ, and she thought she must have died already and gone to heaven. Then she noticed that the gilt on the figure's halo was flecked and streaked with pigeon droppings and one of his feet was missing.

With a sudden, violent jerk the car pulled free of the steeple and flipped upright again. Gabrielle slid back along the bottom of the basket and into Max's arms.

"I knew I should have stayed away from churches," he said, and she thought then that he really was well and truly mad.

"Marry me, Gabrielle."

❧

Gabrielle opened her eyes to a turquoise sky laced with wisps of clouds. Above her, tangled among thick piny branches, was the wicker car, its bunting ripped and flapping in the wind, the cord netting dripping down like fingers of moss.

For a moment she had no idea where she was or what had happened. She had this strange memory of being in Max's arms, of hearing his voice, low and silky in her ear, talking about churches and asking her to—

No, she couldn't possibly have heard him right. She was, after all, expecting to die at any moment. Perhaps, in her terror, she had hallucinated the words out of his mouth.

She sat up. The world tilted for a moment, then was still. She looked around her. She was on the edge of a fallow field. In the middle of the field was the balloon, which had pulled free of the car. It lay heaving on the wet, dark earth as the hydrogen escaped through the rents in its fabric, making it look alive. A plowman, who had been working the nearby acres, came trotting up to stare openmouthed at the writhing monster, then took off running for the village.

There was no sign of Max.

"Max!" she cried, stumbling to her feet. "Max, don't frighten me like this. Where are you?"

She took a step forward, toward the balloon, thinking perhaps he was somehow wrapped up in the silken envelope. The car, she remembered now, had struck the tops of the trees, flipping upside down again, flinging her out of Max's arms and hurling her into space. But perhaps Max had gotten tangled up in the balloon instead.

Her foot caught in one of the freshly turned furrows, pitching her forward. She flung out her hands to break her fall, and a flash of white in a nearby gulley caught her eye—the ruffle on the cuff of a man's shirtsleeve.

She ran to him, stumbling over the clods of earth and falling to her knees beside him. He lay on his back, his arms flung out at his sides. His face was still, his eyes shut, but his chest rose and fell steadily with his breathing. She almost sobbed aloud with relief.

"Max . . . wake up." She cradled his head, and it lolled against her breast. "Oh, Max, my love. Wake up, please."

He didn't stir, and suddenly she was afraid again. She had heard once of a man—a comte who was an intimate of the king—who fell off his horse while hunting and went to sleep never to wake up. He lay for years in his bed, growing steadily thinner as his flesh wasted away and his skin toughened like leather-She shook him, a bit roughly. "Max, damn you. Wake up or I'll . . . I'll . . ." She tried to remember what one was supposed to do to revive the victim of a dead faint. "Or I'll throw a pitcher of vinegar into your face," she threatened, oblivious to the fact that there wasn't even a thimbleful of the stuff to be had for miles.

She heard in the distance the peal of a bell, the tocsin sounding the alarm to the villagers. Max's eyelids flickered.

She shook him again, more gently this time. "Max, if you don't wake up this instant, I really will marry you even if I did dream the whole thing. It would serve you right."

A slight flaring of his nostrils betrayed that he had heard her, although his eyes remained closed.

Gabrielle shook him again, as hard as she could. She was furious with him for almost killing her and then almost dying himself, and for making her love him.

"I'll saddle you with a dozen babies to support," she vowed, coming up with the worst threat she could think of. "And I'll nag you worse than a Les Halles fishwife. I'll make you sleep on the floor at night and—omph!" He pulled her down on top of him, smothering her words with his mouth.

He forced her lips apart, pushing his tongue past her teeth, thrusting it deep into her mouth, and a hot, surging passion flared immediately within her. It was not enough for her to touch him. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, to fuse their bones and meld their hearts. There was nothing soft about her need of him; it was all hard, pulsating hunger. She wanted to devour him.

His mouth was a wet, hot hole to be filled. Her fingers grabbed his hair, pulling him closer so she could probe it more deeply with her tongue. He stroked her back, pressing the ridge of his palm against the rise of her buttocks, molding her to him so that she could feel his desire harden and grow. She rubbed her stomach against it in bold, sensuous circles and her hunger grew and grew with him, swelling with him, until she thought she would surely die of it.

He broke the kiss with such violence she thought he was angry.

"Ah, God in heaven, Gabrielle . . ." He groaned against her mouth, though she could barely hear him for the throbbing of the blood in her ears. She pressed her face against his neck, unable to look at him. Only a whore, she thought, would have behaved in such a way. What must he think of her?

"Gabrielle?"

Reluctantly she raised her head to look deep into his eyes. She could see shadows of his thoughts reflected in their dark, sooty grayness. Yet they remained as obscure and unreveal-ing as a tarnished mirror.

After a long moment—when Gabrielle was sure the entire world waited breathless to see what he would say—he sat up, pulling her with him. "You can do all those things," he said, his voice shaking. "As long as you never leave me."

Gabrielle, who was still finding it difficult to breathe let alone think, wondered what particular things he was talking about. Yet somewhere, like a song in her blood, she caught the echo of his voice saying Marry me, Gabrielle.

"Max, I ... If it's only because you want me to sleep with you—"

He pressed his hand against her mouth. "Christ, yes, I want to sleep with you—so badly I ache. But I also want you there beside me in the morning when I wake up. Every morning. I want you to saddle me with children to support, the more the better, and starting with your own adorable son. I want someone to laugh with during the good times, and someone to cling to during the bad times. I want you, Gabrielle. As my wife."

Behind them the hot wind rushed through the trees, making a sound like waves crashing against a rock. She could smell the peaty dampness of the freshly turned earth. She could feel the sharp, sticky pine needles under her legs. She thought he was probably the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

She didn't know it was possible to be this happy.

Suddenly she felt embarrassed, unable to meet his eyes any longer. She looked down at her lap. Her dress was ripped and stained with mud. She had no shoes or hat, and the wind blew her hair in wild tangles around her face. She tried to gather it back with her hands, then, giving up, rubbed at a smear of dirt on her skirt.

He captured her hands with one of his. With the other he tilted her face up until she could no longer avoid his eyes. "I like you looking a bit disheveled, remember? Marry me, Gabrielle."

A smile trembled on her lips. But the smile faded as it occurred to her that he had yet to tell her he loved her. And then the smile returned as she realized that in a way—his way—he just had.

Her eyes drank in his face while he waited for her answer. She savored the strong curve of his cheekbone, the firm line of his lips, the throbbing pulse in the lean muscles of his neck.

She touched the pulse with the tip of one finger. Felt it stop, then start up again, faster. "Yes," she said, and the word, from deep in her throat, came out broken and shaky.

His eyes warmed and his lips parted, and her fingers fluttered up to capture his smile. He took one of her fingers between his lips, nibbling at it gently once, twice, sucking it deeper into his mouth, then releasing it.

"Oh, Max," she said on an exhale of breath. She cradled his face with her hands. She kissed his eyes, first one, then the other. She brought her mouth close to his, but let it hover there, allowing the anticipation to build and build until it was like a high-pitched note whining through her blood.

Even then she didn't kiss him, merely slid her tongue lightly across his lips. His shirt, which had pulled loose at the neck, was twisted half off his shoulder. And she turned to put her lips to the curve of his bare flesh, licking the smooth muscle, tasting him. Her breasts, pressed fiat against his chest, felt the echo of the drumbeat of his heart. Her hands roamed over his body, exploring him inch by slow and careful inch.

"Gabrielle ..." His voice rumbled against her neck, raising goose bumps on her skin. "I think we'd better stop while we still—"

A volley of shouts, carried to them by the wind, shattered the quiet. Gabrielle raised her head from where it rested in the crook of his shoulder and looked out across the field. Her eyes opened wide, and a small laugh escaped her lips.

A group of the villagers had invaded the field, armed with pitchforks, axes, and scythes. One, who must have been the intendant, for he was the only one wearing breeches and a coat, approached the balloon warily. He held a long pitchfork by the end of its handle, making menacing jabs in the air.

He lunged the pitchfork like a javelin at the monster. The balloon belched, and a stream of gas jetted out with a moaning hiss. Letting out a loud shriek, the man jumped back, dropping his weapon.

"Merde!" Max exclaimed, trying to scramble to his feet, intent on rescuing the fallen beast.

But Gabrielle grabbed his waist, holding him back. "Don't be silly, Max. Do you want them to start sticking their pitchforks into you? There must be thirty of them, and besides, it's too late anyway."

Several of the men had begun to hurl stones at the fluttering, writhing envelope. It groaned and collapsed inward, shrinking. Emboldened, they approached it slowly, and when it showed no signs of counterattacking, they began to slash and hack at it with their scythes and axes.

"God, I can't watch this." Max moaned. He sat back, bracing his elbows on his bent knees, and buried his head in his arms. "They're killing her."

"Good riddance," Gabrielle said.

He flung his head up to scowl at her. "Good riddance? Have you any idea how much in debt I put myself to build that damned aerostat?"

Gabrielle tried to decide when Max looked his most adorable—when he flashed that devilish, damn-the-world grin, or when, as now, his mouth curled into a sulky pout like a small boy's.

She kissed him. "I'll marry you anyway," she said. "Rich or poor, I love you, Maximilien de Saint-Just. I always will." And she leaned into him to kiss him again.

He drew in a ragged breath and put her firmly away from him. "If you want me to wait until we're properly married before making love to you, ma mie, you'd better not come any closer. Because I have only so much willpower and you are pure temptation—Jesu, what are they doing to her now? "

Gabrielle rose to her knees to look out across the field. The villagers, she saw, had hitched the defeated balloon to a plow horse and were about to drag it in ignominious shame off the field.

Max was up and storming after them before Gabrielle could stop him. By the time she caught up, he had already felled four men and wounded several others before being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. A short rotund man in a black cassock jumped around the pile of bodies that wrestled on the ground, waving his arms and shouting.

"Desist, I say. In the name of our savior, I command you to cease this violence at once!" He ended this tirade with a volley of violent sneezes.

The villagers desisted; Max did not. Filled with tremendous sexual energy he hadn't been able to release through normal means, Max was getting a perverse satisfaction out of pounding flesh with his fists. Two more villagers received bloody noses before he was again subdued.

He was hauled to his feet and shoved before the man in the black cassock.

"Are you responsible for the invasion of our village by this heathen beast?" the cure`demanded of Max, pointing a quivering finger at the once great balloon, now withered and ripped and stained with mud.

One of Max's eyes was already beginning to swell, but he was able to look down the length of his arrogant nose at the cure`. "That, you damned meddling priest, is no heathen beast. It happens to be an agnostic aerostat."

Gabrielle clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh. The cure`, however, was not amused. He turned his baleful glare on her. She thought he was the ugliest man she'd ever seen. He had big, hanging jowls and a pushed-in nose deformed by taking too much snuff. He resembled one of those pugnacious dogs bred for bear-baiting.

"This man," the cure` thundered, "is obviously the devil in disguise come to plague and tempt us. And this woman"— he flung a pointing finger at Gabrielle and she jumped in alarm—"is the devil's handmaiden!"

An angry rumble stirred through the villagers, and one man took a step forward, brandishing his ax.

"I will have no more viooolence!" the cure` roared, punctuating it with a huge sneeze. The villager stumbled backward, flinging his arm in front of his face to shield himself from the spray.

Max had jerked free of the hands that held him, and he snatched up the priest by the front of his cassock. He gave him a rough shake, and the fat man's feet twitched above the earth as if he were a chicken that had just had its neck wrung.

"You'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak about my—" Max stopped in mid-word, and a strange look crossed his face. Gabrielle, worried that in bis maddened state he might do murder, put a restraining hand on her man's arm.

Max relaxed his grip, letting the priest slide to the ground. He rearranged the folds of the curd's cassock, even brushing off a speck of imaginary dust. "My dear Monsieur le Cure`," he said, summoning forth a truly devilish smile, "you are just the man I need."