Hearts Beguiled (36 page)

Behind her mask, Gabrielle raised a pair of flaring dark brows. "And you must be Max's little whore."

Beside her Max made a funny sound, halfway between a groan and a laugh. The officer looked shocked. The woman's face had paled beneath its thick coating of rice powder, and her mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish feeding on crumbs. Before she could say anything, Gabrielle swept her skirts aside and, holding her head high, walked away from them and down the crowded gallery toward the doors.

She had gone about ten feet when a strong hand fell on her arm, pulling her around.

"Gabrielle—"

She tried to jerk out of Max's grasp. He tightened his grip.

"Let go of me!"

"Not until you listen."

She swung her loo mask at his face. He ducked and, snatching it from her, tossed it over his shoulder.

She glared at him. "People are starting to look at us."

"Then quit making a scene."

"I'll show you a scene, you bastard. If you don't let go of me this instant, I'm gong to throw back my head and scream at the top of my lungs."

Max didn't take any changes. He clamped his free hand across her mouth and marched her through the press of bodies to where he had spotted a small door camouflaged by a painted panel between two pilasters. He yanked it open and flung her roughly inside. He had to duck his head to follow after her.

He slammed the door shut behind him with his heel and locked it. They were in a small receiving room, furnished with only a small tapestried chair and a bureau, gilded and intricately decorated with marquetry. The room was lit by a pair of candles set in brass sconces on the wall.

Gabrielle stood before him, her eyes flashing, her hair tumbling loose and looking like a waterfall of fire. She was breathing hard, and her breasts heaved, threatening to tumble right out of the low-cut bodice. She looked magnificent, and desire burst upon him—full-blown, hard, and demanding.

"I hate you, Maximilien de Saint-Just," she said, rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand and sounding so much like a little girl indulging in a temper tantrum that he almost laughed. "I don't know why I bother with this marriage. I should let you go to her, your mistress. It's where you want to be anyway."

"The devil take you, Gabrielle, I am where I want to be and she isn't my mistress." He advanced on her and she backed up, until she was pressed against the edge of the bureau. All the old anger and pain came rushing back to him. He wanted to strangle the life out of her. He wanted to crush her against him and kiss her until she admitted she loved him still, had always loved him, no matter what, no matter what...

He lowered his face until it was but inches from hers. He saw her eyes widen, and he thought it was from fear. "I haven't touched Claire de Tesse since the night before I found you freezing to death in a ditch." His hands seized her shoulders, and he shook her roughly. "And I wouldn't have gone near the bitch in the first place, damn you, if you hadn't left me!"

Suddenly her face crumbled. Hurt filled her eyes, turning them from vivid violet to almost black, and Max felt a funny, tight ache in his chest.

"How could you have done it, Max?" she said, so softly he barely heard her. "How could you have made love to that woman?"

He shook her again. "I didn't make love to her. I fucked her. There's a difference, and it's time someone showed you what it is." He gripped the sides of her head, crushing his mouth down hard over hers.

He kissed her cruelly, without feeling, and she held herself stiff, keeping her teeth clamped tightly together. But when he eased the pressure of his lips, she slipped away from him, lunging for the door.

She scrambled frantically, feeling for the latch. He seized her from behind, wrapping one powerful arm around her and flinging her around, slamming his mouth back down onto hers, impaling her against the wall with his hard, bulging loins and his invading tongue.

This time she fought him, going for his face with her nails, and he encircled her wrists in a crushing grip, twisting her arms behind her back. Still she heaved and thrashed about so violently that he had to press his entire weight against her body, pinning her to the wall. He hadn't realized she was so strong, and her fury made her stronger. Suddenly he felt trapped, frightened of hurting her yet more terrified that if he let go of her now she would run away from him again, and this time she would be lost to him forever.

He released her mouth. "Don't fight me, Gabrielle."

"Damn you, Max, I'm not your whore!"

"You're my wife. Can't you understand what that means to me, what it did to me when you left? Can't you see how much I—omph!"

She had jabbed an elbow into his chest, taking him by surprise. But she got no more than a step away from him and he was on her again, catching her by one of the ruches on her dress. It ripped partway, then held fast, and he enveloped her in a bear hug with both arms, lifting her. His foot caught one of the legs of the chair and they went stumbling and sliding, locked together, across the slippery polished parquet floor. He struck the bureau so hard with his hip that he swore, and it, too, went skidding across the floor and banged against the wall.

They wound up with her back arched over the rounded top of the bureau and him covering her with the hard length of his body. He was panting so loudly it sounded like a summer windstorm had invaded the tiny room.

"Goddamn you, Gabrielle. You are mine!"

"Never!" she managed to spit back in his face before his mouth crushed down on hers again, forcing her lips apart.

He had snarled the words at her, but his kiss this time, though hard and desperate, was no longer cruel. Love, in all its anguish and all its ecstasy, came pouring out of him. His lips softened, gentled, moved over hers rhythmically, possessively, tenderly. He didn't know it, but with his kiss he was crying out to her, proclaiming his love, and something deep within her heard it and instinctively reached out to answer him.

All he knew was that he felt the anger leave her and desire slowly suffuse her, taking its place. Tentatively he released her wrists, and her arms came up and curled around his neck while her mouth slanted hungrily across his.

He pushed the narrow sleeves of her dress down to her elbows and yanked at the bodice, freeing her breasts from their loose restraint. Her nipples were turgid with arousal. He pulled at them gently and then rubbed them between his fingers. Their kiss deepened, their tongues possessing each other, and he thought then that he had won. Or perhaps it was she who had won. He no longer gave a damn.

He lowered his lips to follow the sweet curve of her jaw, then down along the taut column of her neck, pausing to lick and nibble at the pulse point until she began to writhe and make cooing sounds in the back of her throat. Then lower, down to her breasts. He lifted them in his palms, squeezing them together, and delved his tongue between the deep, moist cleavage. Her face fell forward onto the top of his head and she pressed her mouth in his hair, then rubbed her cheeks in it, back and forth, like a cat. She made a purring sound, too, like a cat showing contentment.

His thick manhood strained against its tight satin sheathing and he moved it in slow and sensuous circles against her pelvis. The rough sapphires on her dress scratched maddeningly through the thin material of his breeches, and he clenched his teeth on a deep, chest-shattering groan.

His strong hands spanned her waist, lifting her until her hips were braced on the rounded front of the bureau. Her knees fell wide apart and he came between them. He bunched up her skirts and underthings around her waist and his hand moved up the long, firm muscles of her thigh. He found the soft nest of hair and he burrowed inside it, sliding his fingers deep into the warm, pulsating core of her. She was wet, quivering, ready for him. Her hands clutched his shoulders, digging in, and she arched her spine and her head fell back, her mouth open.

He pulled his fingers from her to stroke along her slick nether lips, back and forth, faster and faster, while he kneaded the nub of her womanhood with his thumb. With his other hand he fumbled for the opening to his breeches, then at last, at last, he was free. He cradled himself with his hand, and then her hand took the place of his and she guided him into her, wrapping her legs around his hips.

She was so hot, so tight, so incredibly fine. It was as if God had made her just for him. He knew it was irrational, but it seemed that no other woman had ever fit him the way Gabrielle did. It was as if he were the sword and she the sheath, made by a master craftsman, one for the other.

"Gabrielle, Gabrielle, Gabrielle ..."

He crooned her name, over and over, as he plunged into her, again and again, and the bureau knocked against he wall, thudding like a big bass drum, and the candles started to teeter in their sconces. He felt her inner muscles contract around him, and giving one last mighty thrust with his hips, he smothered her scream with his mouth and exploded deep inside her.

He lay hunched over her, his forehead pressed against her breasts. Her lungs pumped hard, and her heart skipped wildly, and her legs were still wrapped around his waist, her skirts bunched up in a crushed wad between them. He would have felt smug at what he had reduced her to, except that he had been left in the same state. This, he thought. As long as we have this together, then I have some hope of keeping her.

Gingerly he pushed himself upright, tucking his shirt back in place and fastening his breeches. He drew her to her feet, helping her straighten her own clothing. The rouge she had put on her cheeks and lips was now smeared across her face; her hair was a mess, half still pinned to her head, the rest cascading in fiery tangles over her shoulders. She tried to pull her bodice, with its built-in corset, up over her breasts, but it had been ripped partway down the middle and she had to hold it together with her fist to keep it up.

Her lower lip fell open and started to tremble, but Max, who had seen her do that before, knew it was from repressed laughter. "Look at me," she said. "I look like . . ." She couldn't finish as amusement overwhelmed her.

His arms went around her and he laced his hands in the small of her back. He dipped his head to rub his tongue along that adorable lower lip. "What you look like, ma mie, is as if you've been well and thoroughly—" He stopped himself, remembering just in time what he had said that had started all this.

She stiffened in his arms, as he knew she would, and he repressed a sigh. She lifted her chin and the candlelight fell full on her face, and he felt a cold dread steal over him for he could read nothing in her face, not even anger.

"That was some lesson you taught me, monsieur. Is that what you did with the marquise de Tesse?"

He opened his mouth to say something cruel and cutting that would pay her back for this time and all the other times. But something—perhaps just plain damned weariness-stopped him, so that what came out of his mouth was, for the first time since she had returned, the uncensored truth.

"No, ma mie. It has never been so wonderful, so passionate, so perfect, with any other woman. Only with you."

She lowered her lashes to obscure her eyes, but he saw her mouth soften into a tiny smile.

"
W
here are you going?"

Gabrielle dropped the latch to the front door and whipped around, a guilty flush suffusing her face. Unconsciously she clutched the roll of drawings tighter to her chest. She had deliberately chosen this early hour to slip out of the house so that Max wouldn't question her about where she was headed. She didn't think he would approve of her caricatures lampooning his noble class—especially now that he was the king's astronomer.

Max finished coming down the stairs, pulling on a pair of gloves. He was wearing his tall leather riding boots and English hunting jacket. He raised his brows at her. "You've neglected to answer my question, Gabrielle."

"Out. I'm going out."

A look of supreme impatience crossed his face. "And alone, I see. There are times, ma mie, when I would dearly love to wring your neck. Haven't you heard there was another bread riot in the Place Maubert yesterday morning?"

"I'm not going to the Place Maubert."

He laughed suddenly. "Of course you aren't, my little revolutionary of a wife." He plucked the caricatures from her hands before she could stop him. "You're taking these seditious drawings to your erstwhile Uncle Simon, who will have them printed up in hopes the mob will be incited to further rioting and the monarchy will fall."

She thrust out her chin. "And what is wrong with that? We're working for liberty."

He didn't comment, but flipped through the caricatures, amused cynicism on his face. To her surprise he handed them back to her.

She frowned. "I suppose now you're going to forbid me to go."

"Would it do any good if I did?"

"No."

"Then I won't bother." He tipped his tricorne at her. "Good morning, Madame la Vicomtesse."

He brushed past her and pulled open the door. But he whipped around suddenly and seized her by the waist to plant a swift, crushing kiss on her mouth.

"Max!" she called after him when she had recovered her breath. "Where are you going?"

He was already halfway down the front steps, but he turned to give her a wicked grin. "Out," he said.

Gabrielle stewed about Max's irrational behavior all during the hackney ride to the Palais Royal. It was April now; they had been reunited for over four months, living as husband and wife, sharing the same bed—she smiled to herself—as well as the floor, the sofa, and any other surface that happened to be handy whenever passion struck them. Once they had made love in the carriage on the way home from a day at the Vincennes race track, and another time they had done it in their private box at the opera during the second act of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Although they followed fashion by keeping separate bedrooms, he never slept in his.

She sighed. That part of their life was perfect. It was the only part that was.

For in many ways, they all seemed to lead separate lives. Even Dominique was busy in his own world now. He had a tutor and a riding and a fencing master, and he seemed to think his mother, a mere woman, wasn't capable of discussing even the rudiments of these manly pursuits. As the vicomtesse she had a horde of servants to supervise. In her spare time she was supposed to write letters and do embroidery. Instead she drew biting caricatures of the king and queen and their coterie and helped Simon write tracts calling for a republican form of government. As for Max, he had his new duties at court and his scientific experiments with balloons in his laboratory at the Jardin des Plantes. He never discussed any of it with her. He certainly never told her what he thought of the wave of political unrest that was sweeping the country.

That was the trouble, for they never spoke to each other, at least not about anything serious. They played teasing games of seduction that eventually erupted into draining bouts of passion, but they never sat down and simply talked. Every time one or the other of them would drift to a subject that was the least bit personal it would dredge up all the old feelings of hurt and anger. She had left him, and he had taken another woman while she was gone, if you had loved me, one of them would begin. If you had loved me, the other would say. And neither of them was willing or able to forget, or to forgive.

But still, still. . . Though he refused to believe it, she had loved him then, and she loved him now. Every day she spent with him she felt her love for him spread and grow deeper, like the roots of a giant oak tree. And as the oak provides shade and holds down the earth, so had Max become essential to her life.

Perhaps, she thought for the hundredth time, I should take the first step. But what that step should be she had no idea, and still, still . . . she was certain that although she loved him, he no longer loved her, perhaps had never loved her, and so she did nothing.

Suddenly Gabrielle became aware that the hackney had stopped moving. She could hear shouts and the pounding of running feet coming from the street, and she raised the window shade and leaned out to see what was happening.

The hackney had come to a standstill in the middle of the Pont Royal. A crowd of angry, shouting people marched toward them down the middle of the bridge, quickly engulfing everything in their path the way the tide swallows shells and rocks lying on the beach. At first she couldn't make out what they were shouting and then she caught a phrase here and there.

"Hang the rich!"

"Death to all grain speculators!"

"Cheap bread! Bread for two sous!"

It wasn't only men in the mob—there were women and children as well. The men were armed with pikes, pitchforks, and iron bars. The women had clubs made from the staves of dismantled fences and had loaded their pockets and aprons with rocks and bits of cobblestone. Two or three of the rioters even brandished muskets which they fired into the air. But although their slogans were full of hate, a holiday atmosphere prevailed. Gabrielle even spotted a vendor pushing wine from a cart and another selling paper twists of chestnuts and strings of tobacco.

The traffic on the bridge had been completely enveloped by the mob. There was a fancy calash—a light, low-wheeled carriage with a folding top—directly ahead of her hackney, and the rioters suddenly swarmed around it. It rocked and swayed precariously for a moment and then tipped over onto its side. Its occupant, a man in a satin suit with curled and powdered hair, was dragged out to be swallowed up by the hostile crowd. And Gabrielle felt the faint stirrings of fear.

The roar of the mob sounded like the rumbling of a giant waterwheel. She heard a horse whinny in terror and her driver shouting to make way. An almost irresistible compulsion to get out of the hackney and try to run for safety overcame her. Isolated in the carriage this way, she felt as conspicuous and vulnerable as a parrot tied to a pole and, indeed, at that moment she heard a thud as something, a stone perhaps, struck the side of the carriage.

Gabrielle pushed open the door.

It was a mistake. Rough hands clutched at her arms, dragging her out. Without the steps being let down, it was a long drop to the ground, and she landed with a jarring fall on her hands and knees. Someone wearing a hard sabot kicked her

in the side, and then the crowd started to move again. She flung up her arm, just managing to curl her fingers around the handle of the carriage door, and tried to pull herself upright before she was trampled beneath hundreds of feet. Faces swirled around her, mouths agape, eyes bulging white with anger and frenzy. She was kicked again, so hard this time that the breath was driven from her lungs and her vision darkened around the edges. Her grip on the door handle started to slip, and then one of the shouting, twisted faces took on a familiar shape.

"Simon!" she screamed.

A strong hand clasped her beneath the armpit and hauled her to her feet. Simon leaned her up against the wheel of the carriage and put his bulk between her and the seething mass of people that eddied around them.

"Gabrielle! What are you doing here?"

"I came ..." She started to shake. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, God, Simon . . . what's happening?"

"Some rich aristocrat has been caught hoarding grain," he proclaimed, with all the passion of the righteous in his voice. "We're going to force open his warehouse and distribute it to the people."

Holding her arm, he began to drag her forward, back into the flow of people moving across the bridge. Gabrielle had no choice but to follow.