Hearts Beguiled (34 page)

❧

"I've been praying for the day you'd come home to us," Simon said. He sat in his chair before the hearth while Gabrielle perched next to him on an oaken settle, cradling a cup of tea in her hands. Dominique and Agnes were at the kitchen table, making a feast out of gingerbread, biscuits, and a type of jam called raisine, which was made from pears, sugar, and grape juice.

"But I can see by those fancy clothes you and the boy are sporting that it's him you've returned to." Simon's lip curled. "The vicomte de Saint-Just, or so he styles himself now."

Gabrielle met his angry eyes. "Maximilien de Saint-Just is my husband."

Simon thrust out a stubborn lower lip. "That's as may be, but if you had reason to flee from him once, who's to say he won't give you reason again. I don't know what it was he did, but I'm never going to forgive him for it. I told him so to his face when he came poking around here, trying to find out where you'd gone."

"Told him!" Agnes exclaimed around a mouthful of gingerbread. "You attacked him with a broom. Poor Monsieur Max. He just stood there and let you hit him."

Tears filled Gabrielle's eyes, but she was laughing as well. "Oh, Simon ..."

Simon shook his fist in the air. "I'll go after him again if he ever sets his foot across my threshold!"

"Simon, it wasn't Max's fault," Gabrielle said.

He shook his head stubbornly. "He promised to keep you safe. Instead he drove you away."

"By Saint Christopher's whiskers!" Agnes snorted, spewing out a mouthful of gingerbread crumbs. "If you'd shut up, husband, long enough for her to get a word in, maybe Gabrielle can explain—"

Simon scowled at his wife. "You forget yourself, woman!"

Agnes sniffed. "I remember well what I'm about. It's the whereabouts of your head lately that has me worried." She grinned at Gabrielle and pointed at Simon. "He's joined that silly club—those Freemasons. Now he does nothing but write pamphlets and spout politics all day. And nights, too, when I don't keep him otherwise occupied."

Simon blushed furiously, and Gabrielle took a sip of tea to hide her smile. Simon and Agnes married! Who would have ever thought it?

Agnes harrumphed. "He sees a plot of some sort or other in every bowl of soup."

Simon pushed his bulk out of the chair, flinging his arms out at his sides. "And should I stand idly by and watch my country be destroyed by the Austrian bitch and that outdated monarch, her husband?" He reached into the rubbish bin and pulled out a dark and crumbly loaf of bread that had a sour odor to it. He waved it beneath his wife's nose. "Do you see this? This is what the people of Paris are forced to live on while Madame Deficit drapes herself in diamonds!"

"You're scattering crumbs about, you fool. Do you want us to get mice?" Agnes rolled her eyes at Gabrielle. "Three hours I wasted standing in line for that. But you don't see me wasting another two writing a tract about it."

"The warehouses are stuffed with rotting grain while the speculators wait for prices to rise." Simon appealed to Gabrielle, ignoring Agnes. "Yet a thousand sacks of flour are used each day to powder the heads of the aristocrats." He looked at Gabrielle's hair, which was styled simply to hang loose down her back, unpowdered. "At least you haven't forgotten who—"

He stopped and she could almost see the question forming in his mind. And just who are you really, Gabrielle?

But she could tell him nothing yet. At this very moment Max was meeting with the duc de Nevers, using a combination of blackmail, political influence, and his incredible charm to win freedom for herself and her son. He had asked for her faith and she knew if her marriage had any hope of surviving she must give it to him unconditionally.

Her eyes strayed to where Dominique now sat beside the coal scuttle, his mouth ringed with the raisine jam, building a castle out of the briquettes and getting his blue satin suit filthy in the process. In trying to win back Max's love she risked the loss of her son, and her stomach roiled with fear at the thought.

A heavy silence had descended on the kitchen. She could feel Agnes's and Simon's eyes on her, waiting for her to tell them where she had been this past year and why she had run away in the first place. Someday, when she was sure she and Dominique were free of the duc, she would tell them both everything. But until then she didn't want to risk involving them too deeply in her affairs with her dangerous enemies. She repressed a smile. She could just imagine Simon going after the duc de Nevers with a broom!

Instead she said, "Simon, those pamphlets you write . . . Do you remember how I used to draw those caricatures of the queen—"

"But of course!" Simon exclaimed, slapping his hands together. "What a splendid idea! I'll speak to my printer about how it can be done. My tracts will have a much greater impact with your drawings to accompany them."

Agnes heaved a huge sigh. "Jesu, Gabrielle, I was hoping you would put an end to this foolishness of his, not encourage him."

Gabrielle thought of the duc de Nevers and his lackey Louvois, and the terror and misery they had brought her during the last five years. Her face hardened and a fiery light burned in her eyes. "No one, by the simple virtue of his birth, should have absolute power over another human being. If that is the meaning of liberty then I will fight for it."

Simon beamed. "There you see, Agnes. I couldn't have put it better myself."

Later, as they were leaving, Agnes walked with them into the gardens of the Palais Royal. Dusk had started to fall and the place had a festive air, with its strings of Chinese lanterns and the bustling and colorful crowd. At the palace, the decadent duc d'Orleans was giving yet another rout, and streams of carriages lined up to disgorge the satined and bejeweled revelers.

"Stay within sight of me, petit," Gabrielle called out to her son, who had darted ahead, chasing a squirrel.

Agnes entwined her arm with Gabrielle's. "I know what you're going to say. You think Simon is much too old for, me.

"Simon is a good man."

Agnes heaved a huge, nostalgic sigh, straining the bodice of her dress. "I know you'll think I'm lying like a mountebank, but I fell in love with Simon that very first day." She giggled. "When he tried to beat me with his cane for picking your pocket. Of course he never saw me as anything more than a nuisance he had to put up with for your sake."

"Don't be silly."

She squeezed Gabrielle's arm. "No, it's true. But after you and Dominique left, we both felt so lonely. And then one day we realized, I guess, that we didn't have to be lonely. We had each other."

Her irrespressible smile dimpled Agnes's cheeks. "We were married at Saint Roch's and I wore a white lace gown. It was just as I'd always dreamed it would be." She giggled again. "Of course, I couldn't pretend to be a virgin with Simon—"

"I should hope not."

"But in a way it was like a first time because always before when I lay with a man, it was just work. I didn't like it or dislike it, as long as the man wasn't cruel, but with Simon it's so different. He makes me feel special. He touches me so gently. It's as if he fears I'll break."

In the soft light of the lanterns, Agnes's face glowed with happiness and she looked almost beautiful. For a moment Gabrielle envied her. Not for having Simon, for Gabrielle could never think of him in any terms other than as the father she had never had. What she envied was the security Agnes felt—of knowing she was loved and cherished.

Agnes stopped and turned her around so that they were face to face. "Gabrielle ... are things all right now between you and Monsieur Max?"

"Yes . . . of course," she lied.

Agnes sighed, mistaking the reason for the look of sadness in Gabrielle's eyes. "Simon is the most stubborn man alive. Once an idea gets into his head it takes root there and a team of oxen couldn't drag it out. He was very fond of Monsieur Max once, so perhaps he will come around. Then it could be the way it was before—all of us friends again."

"Maman, look what I found!"

Gabrielle's eyes opened wide with dread at the excited note in her child's voice, and she turned slowly, expecting Dominique to have in tow anything from a mouse to the king of France.

Her impossible son came tottering toward her, clutching an enormous orange and white striped cat to his chest. The cat was so long its tail dragged along the ground between Dominique's legs and its ears pointed straight up on either side of his nose. A paste-jeweled collar twinkled around the cat's fat neck.

"Oh, Dominique . . ." Gabrielle bit her cheek to keep from laughing. Beside her, a whooping Agnes wasn't even bothering to try.

Dominique looked up at her with wide blue innocent eyes. "She's trying to follow us home, Maman. Can we keep her?"

❧

Gabrielle, dragging a sulking Dominique behind her, approached the gates to the Hotel de Saint-Just slowly, keeping a wary eye out for a heavy black berlin with postilions dressed in black and gold.

There was, in fact, a carriage parked in the white pebbled drive, but it was a splendid white landau, not a berlin, and the lackeys wore blue and silver. Even the horses had silver and blue cockades and matching ribbons pleated into their manes. And painted on the door of the coach was a lion's head between two crossed swords.

The hdtel's majordomo, a thin, creaky man with a mournful face, approached on silent feet as soon as they entered the vast Italianate marbled hall. Two other servants hovered nearby to remove their hats and cloaks.

"I'm not speaking to Maman," Dominique announced so loudly that his voice bounced off the tall, domed ceiling. "She wouldn't let me keep my cat."

The majordomo looked down his nose at Gabrielle's son, who was covered with soot, gingerbread crumbs, and bright orange cat hairs. The man's long nose twitched like a rabbit's. "Indeed, Monsieur Dominique?"

Gabrielle smiled apologetically to the steward. Even as a child she had always felt ill at ease around her mother's servants and Max's majordomo, Aumont, seemed especially intimidating. "We just went out ... for a walk," she mumbled, though she knew as the vicomtesse she needn't explain her actions to anyone.

Aumont bowed. "Madame la Vicomtesse." His face was completely blank, but Gabrielle thought she saw something, amusement perhaps, flicker in his pebble-black eyes. "Monsieur le Comte awaits your presence in the grand salon."

It took Gabrielle a moment to absorb what he had said.

Then she paled and exclaimed without thinking, "Max's father is here to see me?"

"Madame. If you please, I shall conduct you there." He left no doubt that the great marechal had issued a command that was expected to be obeyed instantly.

"I'm going, too," Dominique stated. He was now clinging to Gabrielle's skirts, and his mouth had changed from pouting to stubborn.

The steward looked down at the boy, and Gabrielle was surprised to see his thin, angular face soften. "I believe I heard Monsieur le Vicomte mention something about a surprise in the nursery," he said. He snapped his fingers and a servant appeared, but Dominique had already started running for the stairs, exclaiming something about a red 'stat his papa had promised to make for him.

Gabrielle expected Aumont to lead her toward the grand salon, but he hesitated a moment longer. "Madame ... I wasn't sure you would approve." His face left no doubt that he didn't approve at all. "It is a . . . creature Monsieur le Vicomte has installed in the nursery."

Gabrielle paled. "A creature?"

Aumont's nose twitched. "An owl, madame."

"Oh ..." She swallowed a smile. "Well, I shall have a word with monsieur."

He bowed. "Thank you, madame."

As Gabrielle followed the majordomo's spare frame toward a pair of double gilt-paneled doors, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror and almost sighed aloud. Her undressed hair had been whipped about by the damp winter wind and now frizzed and swirled around her head like a lion's mane. She had deliberately chosen the plainest of her new gowns to visit Simon and Agnes—a soft gray wool with just a hint of lace at the bodice and sleeves—not wanting to seem as if she were flaunting her new status as the wife of a vicomte. She had thought the dress elegant when she put it on earlier; now she decided she lacked only a mobcap on her head to keep from looking like a charlady.

Aumont swung open the doors and stepped aside. "Madame la Vicomtesse," he announced.

Gabrielle squared her shoulders and flung up her chin to march into the room. As she swept past the majordomo she had the oddest impression that he winked at her.

The marechal stood at the far end of the room, his arms folded across his chest, his back to the fire. He was tall-taller even than Max—with a thick, round chest, shaped and corded like a wine barrel, and thighs that resembled tree trunks. He was in court dress, wearing a coat of yellow velvet heavily laced with gold and white satin breeches. His fashionable clump-heeled, square-toed shoes were adorned with diamond buckles and an elaborate, powdered wig curled down around his shoulders.

He would have looked foppish but for his massive size and the harsh lines on either side of his haughty, thin-lipped mouth. Instead, he looked like what he was—a man whose mere word could command armies.

He raised a quizzing glass to one eye and surveyed her through it, and his lips curled into a sneer that so resembled one of Max's that it was all Gabrielle could do not to smile in spite of her nervousness.

"For over the past year I've been hearing a ridiculous rumor that my son had taken a shopgirl to wife," he drawled, speaking in the heavy, pompous style noble. "But although Maximilien has always delighted in dreaming up schemes to besmirch the noble name I gave him, I had thought such a thing beyond even him." He sighed and dropped the quizzing glass, looping its string around his finger. "Alas, I see I am mistaken. Not only is he capable, he seems to have done it."

"Monsieur le Comte." Gabrielle performed a deep and respectful curtsy as befitted a dutiful daughter-in-law, but when she straightened she proudly met the comte's hard gray eyes, and said nothing. She refused to defend her lineage or her past to this arrogant man.

"I understand there is a child. A boy," the comte said. "Is it my wastrel son's?"

"No, monsieur."

He raised a pair of thin, dark brows. "Indeed?" He shrugged his broad, elegantly clad shoulders. "Then I shall not ask who the father is." Again he surveyed her with the quizzing glass. "I can understand what caught Maximilien's eye. You're rather beautiful in a windblown way. But I would have thought you too small through the hips to produce a boy. Are you breeding now?"

Angry color stained Gabrielle's cheeks. "That is none of your affair, monsieur.''

"On the contrary, it is very much my affair. For if you aren't yet breeding, then perhaps it isn't too late for me to have this preposterous union annulled."

Gabrielle almost burst into wild laughter. She couldn't believe this was happening to her again. She wouldn't have been surprised if the comte next produced a lettre de cachet and waved it beneath her nose, threatening her with the Bastille.

Suddenly she was consumed with an indignant anger. She was tired of having these men wreak havoc with her life merely because they were obsessed with bloodlines and titles and who would be occupying a moldy old chateau five hundred years in the future. Why was it only women understood that what mattered in this life was not tomorrow, but now-having a mate you loved and who loved you to share your bed and your table; having happy, healthy children to nurture and watch grow. Why should it matter to this pompous, arrogant man what woman his son chose to marry, as long as Max found happiness and love?

She flung her head up and glared at the comte with violet-eyed fury. "If you intend to offer me threats or money with your next breath, monsieur, then I suggest you save it. For I was married to your son before God and married I shall stay until God chooses to sever the union, preposterous though it may be."

"Better take warning, my dear father," said a silky, sardonic voice, "my lady wife is frighteningly proficient with a pistol. If you insult her further she may challenge you to a duel."

Maximilien de Saint-Just leaned with negligent ease against the door frame, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his hands tucked into the pockets of his breeches. As usual the sight of him brought an automatic smile to Gabrielle's lips and a funny, shivery feeling to her chest.

On the other hand, the sight of his son brought a scowl to the marechaVs face. "Speaking of duels, I hear you've killed the marquis de Tesse! He happened to have been a friend of mine."

"As far as I know he still is." Max sauntered into the room. Though she wasted not an ounce of pity on the comte de Saint-Just, Gabrielle couldn't help thinking the mocking smile on Max's face would have tried the patience of even the most sweet-natured parent.

"Why not rush over to Tessa's sickbed right now?" Max drawled lazily. "I'm sure he'd be delighted to see you."

The comte waved an imperious hand. "Never mind about that. It's this marriage of yours that I've come about—"

"You've come to congratulate me. I knew you would be thrilled."

"You have a year to rid yourself of her," the comte said, speaking of Gabrielle as if she were no longer in the room. "I've already arranged it with the marquis de Sevigne! You're to marry his daughter next Epiphany."

Max threw back his head and laughed. "Good God! The girl can't be more than fourteen!"

"And her husband will inherit half of Brittany."

"Then you marry her." Max slipped his arm around Gabrielle's waist and drew her to him. "If you enjoy your marriage bed as much as I do mine, you'll soon have a whole new crop of sons to replace me with."

Gabrielle blushed at Max's frank language, but the comte wasn't looking at her. His eyes, dark with anger, were boring into his son's face, and his hands clenched into tight fists.

"By God, I might have named you as my heir before the court and the king, but that doesn't mean I still can't rectify the error!"

Max shrugged. "Then do it."

The comte turned on his heel and marched to the door. But he paused at the threshold to look back at his son, who still stood in the middle of the room with his arm around Gabrielle's waist. "I often wonder what devil possessed me the night I sired you."

Max's arm squeezed Gabrielle so tightly the breath was pushed from her lungs, but his voice as he spoke was light and mocking. "Yes. Well, a lot of people have suffered over the years for that one mistake of yours."

The comte's face turned puce and he looked for a moment as if he would choke on his fury. Then the doors closed behind his broad back with a resounding and childish slam.

Gabrielle sagged against Max's shoulder. He smelled of tobacco and brandy and she wanted to kiss him, but something about the reserved way he held himself prevented her.

She sighed and he misunderstood the reason for it. "Don't pay any attention to my father. He's always been more bluster than bite—which maybe explains why France can never seem to win a war." He cupped her chin and lifted her face. "Would you mind if I were suddenly poor and titleless again?"

"Don't be an idiot." She shivered. "But he's a terrible, nasty man."

"Forget about him. I have something for you." Max released her to take a piece of paper from his coat pocket. It was a lettre de cachet. The one with her name on it, signed by the king.

She took it with a hand that trembled and looked up at him with shining eyes. "Oh, Max . . . How?"

"I traded for it with a vow of silence. There are certain tidbits of information the duc de Nevers would just as soon never reach the ear of the king." He smiled wickedly. "Actually it's the queen he fears even more, for he was once responsible for the disgrace of a particular favorite of hers. If she ever discovered it was Nevers in back of the plot, she'd have his balls fried in oil and brought to her on a silver platter—"

"Max!"

He laughed. "Sorry, ma mie. I forget sometimes you're such an innocent." He leaned into her and she thought he was going to take her into his arms, but at the last moment he pulled back and she tried to keep her disappointment from showing on her face.

"The duc has begged to see his grandson," he said, in a voice that was clipped and dry. "I told him the decision's yours, and he has agreed that's how it is to be."

She stiffened. "I'll think about it." She looked down at the lettre de cachet that she still clutched tightly in her fist. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. How had he come to possess the kind of knowledge that so frightened a powerful man like the duc de Nevers? Did all this mean that Max had decided to forgive her for running away? Did there remain within his heart even the tiniest spark of love for her?

He was staring at her, and his face looked hard, indifferent, almost cruel. It was how he always looked at her now, except when in the throes of passion. But passion wasn't love. Or was it?

"Max. I ... I don't know how I can ever repay—"

"A husband has certain obligations to protect and care for his wife," he said stiffly.

Shameful tears welled up in Gabrielle's eyes and she turned away so he wouldn't see them. "Nevertheless, I'll always be grateful."

He took a step backward and bowed formally. "As you wish. I bid you good evening, madame."

He was almost out the door before she stopped him.

"Max, will . . . will you be home later tonight?" She clenched her hands behind her back to control their trembling. "Dominique was asking," she lied shamelessly.

"I have an engagement."

"Oh," she said, feeling sick.

His lips twisted at the corners into a knowing smile. "Does Dominique want to know where the engagement is, and whom it's with?"

Gabrielle sucked in a sharp breath. "Why you ... you rake! If you're going to see your mistress, I'd just as soon not hear about it!"

He laughed. "Then I'll take care not to tell you. Au revoir, ma mie. "