Hearts Beguiled (38 page)

❧

Maximilien de Saint-Just lay still and white in Simon's bed above the pawnshop in the Palais Royal. His head was wrapped turban-style with a bandage, hiding the deep groove in his head left by a musket ball. The doctor hadn't been at all helpful. "If he wakes up, he'll probably live," the man had said. "But first he's got to wake up."

Gabrielle sat beside the bed with her husband's hand pressed between hers, as if she could transmit her strength, her life, to him, palm to palm. From time to time, Simon or Agnes would appear in the door, but she always sent them away. Once she heard the sound of raised voices coming from downstairs, and she knew they were arguing over Simon's part in the riot. But Gabrielle thought that no matter what Agnes said, Simon wouldn't stop now. That morning, like a lot of people in Paris, Simon Prion had discovered the power of the mob.

To Gabrielle, this day had taught her the true meaning of terror. She had seen her love, her whole reason for being, be struck by musket fire and go down. Although she had tried to bite and scratch and claw her way to his side, she had known she would be too late, was already too late, that she had lost him again . . . this time forever.

She had prayed, not coherently, but a cry of anguish sent up to heaven, offering to trade her life for his, begging for a miracle. And a miracle had occurred. For just when she thought the mob was going to tear him apart, a troop of cavalry, riding five abreast, had burst onto the square from each of the surrounding streets, swinging their sabres, and the rioters had fled, terrified.

Among the chaos of the screams and the drifting pall of smoke and the litter of pikes and staves, Gabrielle had knelt beside Max and put her hand on his heart, and she had thought that if it no longer beat, then her own heart would surely stop as well.

Now, her eyes fastened on his face, his hand clutched in hers, she willed that heart to go on beating.

He stirred and moaned and opened his eyes, and she saw a terrible fear in their dark gray depths. She squeezed his hand and leaned over him. "Hello, my beloved."

The fear left his eyes. "Gabrielle ..." One corner of his mouth twisted upward. "My head hurts like bloody hell."

She smiled, not even realizing that tears were streaming down her face. "Hush. You're not supposed to talk."

"No . . . things I must say."

She brought his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips against his knuckles. "Later. Sleep now."

He sighed and his eyes drifted closed. He mumbled something, and she leaned closer.

"... love you, Gabrielle."

She thought he had said it, but she could not be sure.

❧

It was late the next afternoon before he awoke again. This time his breathing was regular and his eyes were clear. Gabrielle's own eyes were bloodshot, and her back ached from sitting up all through a night and a day in the chair. She felt a mess. Max thought she had never looked more beautiful.

She tilted his head up and held a steaming cup to his lips. He sniffed at it and wrinkled his nose. "What is it?"

"Drink it. Or do you want me to pour it down your throat?"

"You are a vengeful woman," he accused. He drank it down, but not without a lot of gagging and grimacing.

"I am very angry with you, wife," he said, trying to recover some of his manly authority. "You gave me the fright of my life when I saw you caught up in that mob. Do you realize how close you came to being killed this morning?"

"It was yesterday morning, and you are the one, Maximilien de Saint-Just, who has been lying there bleeding all over Simon's bed!"

"Simon ... is that where I am?" He looked around the room, which was filled with the clutter Simon couldn't or hadn't the heart to sell. "How did I get here?"

"Simon and some of his friends carried you." She gave him a trembling smile. "The soldiers wanted to arrest you for inciting the riot." Gabrielle had clung to him at the time, shielding him with her body, calling out that she was the vicomtesse de Saint-Just, and the soldiers, seeing her fine clothes, didn't dare not believe her.

He patted the blankets beside him. "Come lie by me."

"Only if you promise to behave yourself."

He gave her his most devilish smile and promised nothing.

She stretched out on the bed beside him. He pulled her closer until her head leaned against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair.

"You smell all smoky," he said.

"And you're burning up with fever." She raised up on one elbow and stroked his cheek, roughened by two days' growth of beard. His skin was hot and flushed.

She started to draw away, but his arm tightened around her, surprisingly strong. "Don't leave me. I have a confession to make."

She leaned over and kissed his lips. They were dry and cracked, but they were his and they felt wonderful. "Should I summon a priest?" she teased, although a part of her cringed inside. Was he in some terrible pain he was hiding from her? Did he fear he was going to die?

In the next instant she was relieved to feel his chest rumble with laughter. "God, spare me those priests with their eternal babbling in Latin." He threaded his fingers through her hair and rubbed his thumb across her temple. "I have a confession to make to you, ma mie. "

He fastened his eyes on hers. They were filled with such sadness they brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes. "I should never have married you," he said, and Gabrielle's heart plummeted.

She lowered her gaze and addressed his neck. "I understand, Max. You've made it very plain these last months that you no longer love me."

His hand tightened in her hair and he pulled her head up. "But I do love you,"

She shook her head. The shameful tears threatened to gush from her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Her throat felt as if a vise had been tightened around it. For a moment she couldn't breathe or swallow and words were impossible.

"Gabrielle, dammit, I said I love you!"

She drew in a shuddering breath. "You-you only w-want me physically."

"Hell, yes, I want you physically. And every other damned way there is." He brought his other hand up to her face. "Gabrielle, Gabrielle . . . You'd have to be an idiot not to see how much I love you."

She was an idiot. Joy filled her. Again she couldn't breathe or swallow because of the thick lump in her throat, and her eyes started leaking tears like a rusty ladle.

"Why are you crying? Gabrielle, say something. Jesus." He spoke gruffly, but he was smiling.

She stuttered and blubbered, but she finally got the words out. "But if you love me still, then why did you say you should never have married me?"

The smile left his face. His hands drifted down her neck and settled on her shoulders. "Because you deserve better than a man like me, Gabrielle. It didn't really surprise me when I came home to find you gone that day. I knew I was never worthy of you."

"Not worthy of me! Oh, Max, I'm the one not worthy of you. I let you marry me knowing I would only bring you trouble. I—"

"No. Let me finish. Why can't you ever be obedient and submissive like a proper wife, and allow me to have the last word?"

She thrust out her chin and her eyes flashed. "Why, I'm so very, very sorry, my lord and master. I try to be a good wife. It's just so hard sometimes, especially when you men get to make up all the rules."

A corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes filmed over with a strange wetness. His hands squeezed her shoulders and he gave her a tiny shake. "God, Gabrielle, I do love you."

"Oh, Max—"

"Be quiet, woman. There are things I have to say, things I should have said months ago, and I'm going to say them if I have to rip the cover off this pillow and gag you with it."

But first he made her help him sit up, supported by the pillows. Then he drew her down to sit beside him, their left hands entwined, her head within the crook of his right arm. The room grew dark while he spoke and a spft breeze came up, bringing with it the scent of printers' ink and frying crepes from the gardens below. He told her first about his childhood in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the days of his youth spent as a brigand. Then he told her all about Abel Hachette and the cabal and the spying he had done for them over the years.

"I Jiad myself half convinced I was doing it for France, but a part of me always saw through the hypocrisy of Hachette and the cabal. But at the time none of it mattered, because I was more interested in getting revenge on my father by dragging the noble name of Saint-Just through the mud." He sighed, shifting the arm that held her, and his fingers and thumb began to caress her ribs. "Then you knocked on my door that day and suddenly I began to care what sort of a man I was. I couldn't bear the thought of letting you down, of failing you. And, of course, that's exactly what I did."

Her fingers tightened around his. "But you didn't, Max. It was my own stupid fault for jumping to the wrong conclusion—"

He stopped her words with his mouth. But when she started to respond to his kiss he pulled away.

"Let me finish, ma mie ... I hated you for leaving me only because I knew I deserved it. I blamed you for believing I had done the very despicable acts I knew in my heart I was capable of doing. Hell, why should you have trusted me? There was nothing I had done in my entire life up until the moment of our meeting that made me worthy of your trust. Or your love."

She put her palm against his cheek and turned his face back within reach of her lips. She kissed his eyes and rubbed her nose around his cheek, stroking his mouth lightly with her own. "You judge yourself too harshly, my darling. I'm sure a lot of what you did for the cabal, whatever their motives, was good for France. Percy told me once you've the best scientific mind this country has." She had her lips to his ear, and he could feel her smiling. "You certainly are the best lover in all of France. Probably in all the world,"

His chest heaved in a soft grunt. "How would you know? You've only had me and that Martin fellow of yours, and he couldn't tell his yard from a dyemaster's stick."

She flung up her head. "Max!"

"Don't turn all wide-eyed innocent on me, Gabrielle. You know I'm right. Besides, Agnes said so."

"Agnes! What does she know?"

"A lot. She came to see me, you know."

"She didn't! When?"

"A few days ago. The day after you told her and Simon all about what had happened to drive you away—about Nevers and Louvois."

Last week Gabrielle had at last allowed the duc de Nevers a few closely supervised minutes with his grandson. That afternoon, she had told Agnes and Simon everything, and in telling them she had, in some strange way, freed herself of the past, and of the hatred she bore for Dominique's grandfather.

Max was laughing against her hair. "That little buxom urchin accused me of being as blind as a one-eyed mole, unable to see the obvious right under my nose—which was that you loved me, and that I was breaking your heart."

"You were breaking my heart, Max. I was so miserable all these weeks thinking you no longer loved me. I couldn't forgive—"

"Shh." He pressed his fingers against her lips to stem the flow of words.

She had been about to say that she couldn't forgive herself for hurting him. But he thought she was going to say she couldn't forgive him for the marquise de Tesse, and the look on his face reminded her of Dominique when he had been naughty and came to her seeking absolution and reassurance.

He picked up her hand and sandwiched it between his own. "Of all the mistakes I've made in my life—and there have been a whole soup pot full of them—the one I most want to have back is the marquise de Tesse. I was miserable before it happened and I was miserable afterward. I was even miserable during the act, if such a thing is possible, and I swear to you, Gabrielle, by all that's holy, that I will never, ever, even look lustfully at another woman in my life." He put her hand over his heart and held it there.

She had let him make his act of contrition because it warmed some tender spot in her to hear the words. But now Gabrielle waved her hand—the one that wasn't pressed against his heart—acrjoss the air as if shooing away a mosquito. "Oh, pooh! I no longer care about that."

His eyes widened in astonishment. "But—"

"Agnes said it would have served me right if you'd taken a dozen mistresses. She said I was a ninny lobcocks if I expected you to be as celibate as a monk after I had disappeared from your life. She said you couldn't be expected to know you'd ever see me again, and she thinks you're a saint for taking me back."

"A saint!"

"Her exact words were, 'May pork and peas choke me if Monsieur Max shouldn't be canonized for putting up with your foolishness.' "

He laughed, cuddling her against him. Then he threaded his hands through her hair and tipped her face up to meet his lips.

His kiss began gently, but the fires of passion, always so easily ignited between them, burst into flame. It was Gabri-elle who finally pulled away from him. "We mustn't, cheri. You're feverish and weak, and if you up and die on me now I would truly never forgive you."

"My head does still hurt like bloody hell," he admitted. He brushed the hair from her temple with the tips of his fingers. "Agnes said something else. She said I already knew well how to survive, but that I would never understand a thing about living, or about loving, until I learned compassion. Until I learned how to forgive."

Gabrielle bit her lower lip and lights of amusement danced in her eyes. "That's odd ... she said the very same thing to me."

Max smiled and nuzzled her with his chin. "She's a very wise woman, that Agnes." And his mouth sought hers in a tender kiss, as they told each other in this ageless fashion how they wanted, needed, loved each other.

After a moment their mouths parted long enough to let them settle themselves more comfortably among the pillows. "Do you believe now, ma mie, that I love you?" Max said.

"I believe," Gabrielle answered solemnly. "And do you believe—"

He stopped her with his lips. "Of course I do," he said against her mouth, giving her that smile she loved so much. "How could you not love the best lover in all of France, probably in all the world?"

"Are you the best?"

"Yes. And I can prove it to you."

And then he did.