Hearts Beguiled (25 page)

❧

Her breath burning raw in her throat, Gabrielle peered through the tall arched window of the Cafe" Monoury. At first she saw only the reflection of her own tortured face. Then slowly her eyes focused on the interior of the brightly lit room.

The tables were packed with patrons, a few having supper but most enjoying a game of chess or arguing politics while lingering over a carafe of wine. Even the tiled bench that circled the cafe's porcelain stove was jammed with the cotton-covered posteriors of a group of students who were having some sort of drinking contest.

And there, at a table pushed against the far wall, was a small, black-garbed man wearing spectacles. He was nodding his head, and one slender, pale hand drifted up to touch the puckered scar on his cheek.

Louvois.

The muscles in Gabrielle's legs began to twitch like those of a rabbit that has just gotten scent of the fox. Every nerve screamed at her to run, but her heart held her fast. A waiter stood before the table, a tray of brandy snifters balanced on the outstretched fingers of one hand, and the waiter's fat back blocked Gabrielle's view of the other man who sat across from Louvois. She had to know . . .

And then she did, for the waiter stepped back and turned aside, and Gabrielle saw who the other man was.

Perhaps he sensed her eyes on him, for he lifted his head sharply around, the way a stag, feeding in a glen, will suddenly glance up at the snap of a twig. For an eternity she stared at the profile of his beloved face, the high cheekbone, the haughty nose, the hard lips that had not been hard at all but soft and tender beneath her kisses. She swayed forward, making a throaty, moaning sound like a woman in the throes of passion, and her hand came up as if beseeching mercy, or forgiveness.

He turned his head around again and said something to Louvois, and though she couldn't see his face, she knew he smiled. Her hand fell to her side and she started to stumble away, and then, like Lot's wife, she turned back again for one last look at the destruction of her world.

She saw Louvois smile and shrug and reach into his coat pocket. He brought out a heavy purse—she knew it was heavy for he hefted it in his hand, showing off its weight. He held it out, balanced on his palm, across the table the way a servant would present a missive on a gilt tray.

And Max—her lover, her husband, her joy—stretched his hand across the table and took it.

"No." She stumbled backward, shaking her head wildly. "No."

Darkness, thick and black, fell like a blanket over her eyes, blinding her. She whirled around, slamming into a lamppost, and fell to her knees. Wrenching spasms racked her stomach and she doubled over, vomiting into the street.

A pair of carriage wheels clicked dizzily past her face, splattering mud into her eyes, but she didn't notice. There was a strange moaning sound in her ears, like the distant wail of a thousand mourners, and through the moans she heard voices speaking above her head, and someone leaned over and touched her arm.

"She's drunk."

"No, she's ill. Help her."

It was her instinct for survival—as much a part of her as her golden-red hair and violet eyes—that propelled Gabrielle to her feet. She pulled away from the solicitous hands that helped her and took several tottering, blind steps, swaying out into the street. An enormous gray dog snarled and snapped at her, straining at a leash held by a man in silver and blue livery.

The man knocked her roughly aside. "Out of the way, you fool. Do you want to get run over? Make way for Monsieur le Comte."

An emblazoned barouche, its path cleared by the runners and dogs, careened around the corner, clattering over the cobblestones at breakneck speed. The whirling spokes of its high-set wheels missed clipping Gabrielle by inches. Reflextively she jerked aside, and in that moment the darkness around her eyes receded and the moaning wail in her ears died, and only then did she fully understand what Max had done to her. And why.

She ran, weaving blindly through the streets, driven by panic and heartbreak, until her heaving lungs and trembling legs could carry her no further. She stopped in the middle of the Pont Neuf and, leaning over the balustrade, looked down on the oily flat surface of the river while tears streamed down her face to fall into the water below.

Max, Max, Max. His name was a dirge in her heart. She loved him, loved him, loved him. And he ... he had said he loved her, he had made love to her body, he had married her and then he had destroyed it all for a few dirty coins. He had sold her. And Dominique, her son, who had already come to love and trust his new papa . . .

"Max!" she screamed, her voice echoing over the river. "How could you do this to us!"

People stopped to stare; she didn't see them. She saw only the dark depths of the water so far below, the beckoning, peaceful water where there was no love and no betrayal and no pain, and she almost jumped.

But she had the blood of Sebastien de Servien in her veins, and the house of Servien always survived. Galley masters, dunning shopkeepers, even lovers who betrayed—all those and more could be endured. Only death defeated a Servien, and Gabrielle was not ready to die.

Instead she did what she had done before—she ran.

❧

Max strode across the gardens of the Palais Royal with the quick, lilting step of a man madly and passionately in love and on his way to his beloved.

Gabrielle . . . her name was a song in his blood. He wanted to throw back his head and shout it to the world. He had found the fountain of eternal joy, and she was his.

Not that things were perfect. There would, for instance, be a little storm to weather tonight—he had forgotten to tell her he would be late for supper. He wasn't used to considering someone else in his comings and goings, and so it had completely slipped his mind. Obviously, being married was going to require some adjustments on his part. He didn't mind; he would do whatever was necessary to make her happy.

She didn't know it yet, but already he had taken the first step by quitting the cabal. And that was the other small blight on his otherwise rosy world. His last mission for the cabal was completed, but it had left him feeling vaguely uneasy. Louvois had acted strange, distracted, almost as if he didn't understand what was happening, or didn't care. Except for a single, token effort at a bribe, the lawyer had agreed to all of Max's demands without an argument—almost, Max thought, as if he were in a hurry to be done with it and on to the more important thing that was occupying his mind. The whole thing smelled to Max like a three-day-old herring, but it wasn't his worry any longer.

Max supposed one of the other "angels" would direct the smuggling now in his place. He had told Abel Hachette this would be his last mission, and he had meant it. He'd half expected Abel to make one last attempt to talk him out of it this evening when he had gone to the house on the Rue Royal to make his final report. But like Louvois, Abel, too, seemed to have other things on his mind.

The owners of the Cafe" de Foy had recently strung paper lanterns through the chestnut trees. Tonight, they swayed and bobbed in the moist summer air, almost as if they were dancing to Max's internal song of joy. The cafe was busy, and laughter spilled from its open doors, drawing him on.

As he turned his head briefly away from the dazzling lights of the cafe, Max thought he saw a glimmer of spectacles, and a white, scarred face. His step veered off the path, but a second later, Louvois—if it was Louvois and not a figure of his imagination—had disappeared. Now he saw only a pair of whores lingering in the shadows of the peristyle.

He considered investigating further, then changed his mind. Gabrielle was waiting. If the lawyer Louvois had taken the trouble to follow him home, Max would be generous and let the man have his fun. It would do him little good.

Max slowed his steps as he approached his apartment. He looked up and saw the welcoming flicker of candlelight in the window and felt a warm glow in his heart. He had lived in many rooms in his life, from garrets to palaces, but this was the first time he had ever had a place to come home to.

He lingered a moment, hoping to see her silhouette pass by the yellow square of light, but it remained empty. He shook his head, smiling at his own besotted foolishness, and strode through the entrance into the stairwell—

"Bastard!" A slight figure hurled itself out of the shadows, flailing at his chest. "You bastard!"

"Agnes! What-"

She raked his face with her nails, drawing blood. He seized one wrist, then the other, pulling her hands around to the small of her back. He forced her up against his chest and turned her around so that he could see her face in the light spilling in the door from the paper lanterns. It was blotched, swollen with crying and rage. Her chest heaved with her sobbing.

Max felt a coldness wrap slowly around him like a shroud. He heard his own voice speak, hard and controlled, from a long way away. "Gabrielle. What's happened to Gabrielle?"

Agnes jerked against his arms. "You promised to keep her safe, you bastard. And instead you drove her away!"

"Where is she?"

"Bastard."

He shook her, so hard her head snapped back and her teeth rattled. "Goddamn you, where is she!"

"She's left you! She and Dominique. They've gone where you'll never find them."

He squeezed her wrists until she screamed from the pain of it and shoved his face up against hers. His own harsh pants mixed with the girl's whimpers. "Where. Is. She."

She burst into hysterical laughter. "Do you think she would tell me where she was going? She's too smart for that. She knew you would try to throttle it out of me."

Max thought that this was what it must feel like to drown. To know you are dying, to open your mouth to scream, and have the water, the killing water, come pouring in.

'"Why?" he whispered, and the question was torn from his gut. "Tell me why."

She spat in his face. "You know. Bastard."

He let her go. She backed away from him, rubbing her wrists. The look she gave him was full of hate and contempt, and something else—confusion. She doesn't know, Max thought. She knows how, she might even know where, but she doesn't know why.

It didn't matter, he knew why. She had given him the answer anyway, with the first word out of her mouth.

Bastard.

He'd spent his life earning the epithet his father had branded him with at birth. What had made him think he could change overnight—could make himself into someone good enough for her? He had no one but himself to blame if Gabrielle had come to see him clearly just for what he was. A bastard in both meanings of the word.

"If I were a man, I'd kill you," Agnes said.

If I were a man, he thought, I'd probably kill myself.

❧

He climbed the stairs to his apartment because there was nowhere else to go. Just as he knew without looking the moment she entered a room, so he now knew that she was truly, irrevocably gone.

He went into the bedroom anyway. She hadn't had time to bring many of her belongings over from the pawnshop. What few she had were now gone. But she had found, after all, a way to tell him goodbye. It lay beside the candelabra, on the marble surface of his commode table—the gold signet ring he had placed on her finger just two days before.

His fist closed around it, and he pulled his arm up and back, wanting to fling it away from him, wanting to throw it and all that he was feeling halfway across the world. Instead his arm fell to his side and his hand opened. The ring bounced once as it struck the floor and rolled away from him. He didn't look down. He stared unseeing at the wall. Something had torn loose inside of him. He could feel it bleeding, leaking his life's blood into his chest.

His fists clenched and his head fell back, the tendons of his neck standing out like ropes. "Gabrielle!" he shouted, and her name reverberated in the still night air.

"Gabrielle! Gabrielle!"

1788-1789

T
he three vagabonds—a man, an old woman, and a youth—were huddled close around the fire, for a bitter wind blew that November night and clouds, soggy with rain, draped the moon.

Their camp was in a small copse just off the Lyons road. All three were strangers to each other, but they had come together and camped within sight of the road because it made them feel safer from the bands of brigands that roved the countryside. Not that they possessed much to steal but a few turnips. Still, others had died for far less.

They didn't speak much, but waited patiently for the half dozen turnips that roasted over the flames to be done. The youth, a scrawny lad of about seventeen, had said he was so hungry he could feel his belly button rubbing against his spine, but it was an old joke and the other two didn't laugh.

Which was why he waited a long time before calling their attention to the apparition on the side of the road. Eventually fear overcame his pride. "Look," he said, pointing. "Do you think they're ghosts?"

The old hag and the man turned to follow the direction of his finger. They saw the silhouette of a woman standing, feet braced apart, a small child clinging to one hand. The wind whipped the edges of her ragged cloak, making it flap like bats' wings against her legs.

"They look solid enough to me," the man said. He was an odd sort, almost dainty in his mannerisms and with an educated way of speaking. His breeches were so caked with dirt they had crackled when he first squatted before the fire, but anyone could see they had been satin once. He said he was called Louis-Prosper, which was a toff-sounding name.

"What do you think they want from us?" the youth— whose name was a very ordinary Gaston—wondered aloud.

"The fire, mon petit gars," the old hag said. "And some company. Same as us." She sucked on her toothless gums and poked a stick at the smoking roots. "They mean no harm."

Gaston sighed. "They'll want some of our turnips."

The woman and the child had started to approach the camp fire, but warily, like pigeons sensing a trap. They stopped while they were several feet away.

"Good evening, messieurs . . . madame," the woman said in a low, rasping voice, and Gaston thought she sounded young and perhaps beautiful, but he couldn't see her face for it was shadowed by the hood of her cloak. The child who clung tightly to her hand was a boy of about five with flax-colored hair and a pair of blue eyes that filled the whole of his thin, white face. His feet were wrapped in rags, but where the flesh showed through it was blue with cold.

While Gaston was trying to decide what to say, Louis-Prosper pushed to his feet. He dusted off the seat of his filthy satin breeches and made a courtly bow. "Enchante . . . Please enter, pull up a chair. I'll ring for some tea," he said, and the old hag burst into cackling laughter that turned into a fit of coughing.

Stepping forward, the woman pushed back the hood of her cloak, and Gaston sucked in a sharp breath, for her hair was as bright as the flames of their camp fire. She held out her arm, and two plump rabbits dangled from the end of it. "I have meat to share," she said, this time with a dazzling smile, and Gaston's breath expelled from his pursed lips in a low whistle. "If you'll allow me the use of your fire, and one or two of your turnips."

The vagabonds would have traded a field of turnips for one of the rabbits. And Gaston would have traded the rabbit for a chance at a tumble with the woman, for never in his life had he seen anything so fine.

He changed his mind a moment later when, sitting down, she pulled a wicked-looking knife from a makeshift sheath around her waist and began to skin and gut the rabbits. Looking up, he met Louis-Prosper's laughing eyes. The man leaned close to him and whispered loudly. "Best keep your yard in your breeches where it belongs, my randy young friend. She could slit a hole in your belly and weave your guts into a basket with the likes of that."

Gaston's cheeks blazed with embarrassment, but if the woman had heard she gave no sign of it.

The old hag had scooted over for a closer look at the rabbits. She poked one with her stick. "These are plump little darlings, they are."

"Maman stole them," said a clear, piping voice.

They all looked at the boy where he squatted beside the woman, clutching her knee with his fist.

"Hush, Dominique," the woman scolded. A faint blush colored her cheeks, but the fingers that were wrapped around the hilt of her knife tightened their grip. She stared back at the vagabonds, forcing them one by one to drop their gazes to the fire.

After a long silence Louis-Prosper slapped his hands together and massaged his knuckles. "Stolen, are they? And why not, eh? They taste better when they haven't been paid for."

While the meat cooked, the vagabonds fell to discussing politics, for winter was coming and already there was famine and no work. The queen was to blame, they all agreed. Marie Antoinette, who cared more about being queen of fashion than being queen of France. Who bankrupted the treasury by draping herself with clothes and jewels and gambling a year's wages against the faro bank on the turn of a card. They were calling her Madame Deficit in the newspapers now. Nor was the king entirely guiltless, foolish and beguiled though he might be by his frivolous and greedy wife. It was said he spent his days hunting and his nights gorging on the one hundred and eighty dishes prepared for his table. And this while his people starved!

As they argued over what was to be done about it, the woman pulled the boy within the warmth of her thin, ragged cloak, wrapping it tight around their bent legs. She took no part in the conversation, and the others began to suspect she thought herself too grand for the likes of them, although it was kind of her to share her rabbits.

She stirred when a goatskin was passed around the fire. "It's only water, more's the pity," Louis-Prosper said, holding it out to her across the flames.

Her hand shook as she reached for it, and Gaston saw that her face was blotchy and covered with a light film of sweat. "I say, you don't have the pox, do you?" he asked.

Her eyes stared at him, wide-open and unblinking. He had thought them blue, but they were too dark to be blue. Purple, he thought. They're purple. He'd never seen purple eyes before.

She gave some water to the boy first, then drank thirstily herself, tilting back her head. Her hair rippled like a sheet of copper down her back, and Gaston sighed.

But when she went to pass the goatskin on to him, she swayed dizzily and would have fallen into the fire if he hadn't grabbed her arm. Her flesh, he noticed, was as icy as the wind.

"Where are we?" she said to him suddenly.

Gaston's mouth fell open. "Huh?"

The old hag snorted. "The road to Lyons, fille, where did you think?"

"Where do you want to be?" Louis-Prosper asked in a strangely gentle voice.

"The Chateau de Nevers," she said, her voice thick and wandering with the fever. The boy had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. She stroked his fine blond hair. "I must take him there, you see? To the Chateau de Nevers. I thought to give him a mother's love, but I've brought him only misery. I must take him there or he will die."

Gaston had seen many deaths in his seventeen years. The towheaded boy looked cold and half starved, but he wasn't close to dying yet. The woman, he thought, making the sign of the cross, already had one slender foot in the grave.