Hearts Beguiled (8 page)

Max ignored the question. "Could you find out about this girl the police were asking after, Abel? Discreetly."

"Of course. But you could just as easily—"

Max shook his head, standing up. "If it's the same girl and she has enemies, I don't want them finding her through me."

"And if it turns out that she is the enemy?"

"Why, Abel," drawled Max, and a familiar smile of self-mockery flitted across his lips, "since you know my talents for seducing the fair sex, I'm surprised you even need to ask."

Hachette's return smile was a mask that hid his worry. He would have to find out about this Gabrielle Prion. If she turned out to be a threat, she would have to be dealt with. Dealt with and even eliminated if necessary.

For the sake of the cabal. And for France and the revolution.

G
abrielle dreamed it was raining. They had gone for a picnic in the Bois de Boulogne, she and Maman. That morning, when they had set out in the carriage, the sun shone brightly and Gabrielle wore her new hat, the straw one with the big pink silk bow. Then black, heavy clouds covered the sun, and big fat drops began to fall, pattering on the leaves of the trees and flattening the grass.

"Dieu, but we'll be soaked!" Maman exclaimed, seizing her hand, and they began to run.

But when Gabrielle looked down she saw that it was Dominique's hand she held, and he was laughing up at her. "Maman, we're getting wet!"

It began to hail. It rattled on the ground like acorns falling from oak trees. They ran faster, and the wind began to croon, calling her name. The hail clattered louder, sounding now like stones thrown against a window—

"Gabrielle!"

Gabrielle jerked upright in bed. More pebbles rattled the windowpanes, and a voice, decidedly masculine, bellowed her name.

"Fiend seize you, Gabrielle, I know you're up there!"

She slid from the bed, and feeling her way in the dark to the window, carefully pulled the shutters open, wincing as the hinges squeaked. She leaned out to peer into the gardens below.

He stepped from under the trees, a blacker shape among the shadows. As he tilted his head back to look up at her, the pale light from the flickering street lanterns highlighted the sharp bones of his face.

"Ga—"

"Be quiet!" she hissed. "Jesu, what are you—it's past midnight, you fool!"

"Come down," he said.

"No!"

"Come down or I'll serenade you. With a Russian love song. A loud Russian love song with lots of clapping and stamping of feet."

"You wouldn't dare."

He started to sing.

"Dieu ... All right, all right, I'm coming down."

She turned from the window and stumbled over the chest at the end of the bed, stubbing her bare toes. Stifling a cry, she flopped down on the chest to massage her throbbing foot.

"By the patience of poor Job." Agnes sat up in bed, rubbing a hand through her wispy spikes of hair. "What are you doing up at this time of night, rattling around the room like a centime in a beggar's cup?"

"He's here," Gabrielle said through teeth gritted with pain. "The madman."

"Who? Here? Why?"

"To torment me. Why else?"

"Ah."

Gabrielle let go of her foot and twisted around, squinting to make out Agnes's face in the darkness. "And what does that mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"That sound you made. It matches the self-satisfied smirk on your face."

"How can you see my face? It's as black as a privy hole in here tonight. And I said nothing. I was only yawning."

"Hunh."

"The poor soul," Agnes said. "You see what you've reduced him to already. First stealing things and then putting them back, and then wandering around the gardens and singing in the middle of the night. No wonder he's a madman. Why not be charitable and put him out of his misery? You know you want to."

"Which shows," Gabrielle hissed indignantly, "how little you know about anything!"

Dominique stirred, mumbling softly in his sleep. Agnes got up and shuffled over to the trundle bed.

"Hush, petit. " She gathered the little boy in her arms and carried him back to the big bed. "You come sleep with Agnes now, while your maman goes out to meet her lover."

Gabrielle opened her mouth, then shut it. She slipped her bare feet into a pair of sabots and lifted her manteau from the hook by the door, draping it over her nightclothes.

In the hall she could hear Simon's snores coming from behind his closed door. Luckily his window opened not onto the gardens but onto the alley out back. He was a heavy sleeper anyway. Sometimes, when he fell asleep in his chair before the kitchen fire, neither she nor Agnes could rouse him to take him to bed.

The garden was empty when she stepped out the front door of the shop. He's gone then, she thought, but instead of feeling relief, she experienced a terrible disappointment.

"I thought you had changed your mind."

Gabrielle jumped, emitting a small cry. She turned around, pulling her manteau tight under her chin. Maximilien de Saint-Just leaned nonchalantly against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. His cocked hat slashed a band of shadow across his face, obscuring his expression.

They stood in the soft, dark night, looking at each other, until Gabrielle began to feel the beating of her heart and the soft bellows motion of her breathing kings, the way one suddenly becomes aware of a clock ticking in a quiet room.

"You were caterwauling loud enough to wake all of Paris," she said finally, breaking the spell and sounding angrier than she had meant to because she was afraid he would guess at what his presence was doing to her.

"Caterwauling?" He laughed. "How unflattering." He stepped forward and took her hand. Bowing, he brought it to his lips.

"Hello," he said.

The kiss he brushed against the back of her fingers was cool and light. Yet the sensation it produced lingered, warm as morning sunlight.

"What do you want with me?" she asked, her voice breaking huskily.

"Gabrielle, Gabrielle," he sang her name. "Let me show you the stars."

❧

Though it was well past midnight, the streets of Paris weren't empty. Hackney cabs burst out of black shadows, swaying past pools of yellow lantern light before disappearing into darkness again. The laughter and shouts of revelers in the guinguettes—the open-air cafds and dance halls that stayed open all night—drifted past them on the soft breeze. Somewhere a dog bayed and a cat answered with a high-pitched yowl.

Gabrielle's sabots clattered loudly on the cobblestones. She pulled her manteau tightly across her chest, conscious suddenly that she wore only a thin cotton nightdress underneath. She couldn't believe she was doing this, following a man, a stranger, into a dark and unknown night.

Yet the hand that clasped hers felt strong and comforting, and, irrationally, because it was his hand she was not afraid.

He led her into the Jardin des Tuileries. The park, which had once been the gardens of the royal palace before the kings of France had moved to Versailles, was now a fashionable parade ground by day. Children sailed their toy boats in the pond; fountains shimmered in the thick shade of ancient trees; lovers embraced beneath the statue of Mars, the god of war.

But tonight the park was dark and deserted.

Max stopped when they reached the esplanade that overlooked the river Seine. He turned her so that she faced the wide-open expanse of water and, cupping her head with his hands, tilted her face up.

"Look," he said softly.

Gabrielle gasped. The stars! They filled the sky, shimmering, glittering, like thousands of diamond flakes scattered over a swatch of the blackest velvet. And they were so close. It seemed all she need do was reach out and scoop them into her hand. She had spent her life, all the nights of her life, in buildings packed along narrow streets, and though surely she must have glanced up countless times and noticed the stars, never, never once had she seen this. The beauty of it brought tears to her eyes.

"Max!" She laughed, clutching his hands in her excitement. "Oh, Max, it's so beautiful!"

"It's one of the better nights to stargaze. Unusual really, because there's no moon to dim their brilliance and the sky is free of mist and clouds."

His face was in shadow, yet she knew he was smiling at her. Suddenly aware of the warm, rough feel of his hands in hers, she let them go and looked up again. She sighed, at the mystery of him, at what she felt for him.

"There must be millions of them," she said, speaking to fill the sudden silence between them, afraid of what lay beneath it.

He came to stand behind her.

She felt the power of him that was a heat in the night, and she was drawn to that heat the way one would hold out cold hands to a flame. Hold me, she willed to him, and as if in answer to her silent plea, his hands lightly encircled her waist. She felt his breath rustle her hair, and as he spoke his silken voice caressed her ear.

"The ancients saw patterns in the stars, configurations of their gods, and so they gave them names. That one"—he pointed to a particularly bright star with a reddish tinge, and Gabrielle followed the path of his finger into the diamond-studded blackness—"the Babylonians called Sibzianna. The star of the shepherds and the heavenly herds."

He pointed to others, and their names, the way he said them, formed the notes of a song. Andromeda, Delphinus, Perseus . . . His seductive voice wove the song around her like a net, catching her fast within its silken threads.

"Perseus," she whispered, her throat closing tightly. Unconsciously she nestled deeper within his embrace, pressing her shoulders against the reassuring hardness and warmth of his chest. "Perseus . . . How beautiful."

One of the hands left her waist and moved slowly up her arm to her shoulder. He pushed the fall of her hair aside, exposing her neck. He started to bend his head, to press his lips onto the bare white flesh, and she waited, no longer breathing, waited until even her heart seemed to pause in anticipation of his lips on her skin.

But he spoke instead, and though his breath, moist and laden with the exotic scent of brandy, stirred against her neck, it was not what she had expected, hoped for. She pressed her eyes shut against a sudden plunge of disappointment.

"Have you not heard the story of Perseus?" he said. "He was a Greek warrior, sent on a quest to slay the Gorgon Medusa. He was very brave, and so he succeeded, cutting off the Gorgon's head. She had snakes for hair and was so ugly anyone who looked at her was instantly turned to stone."

Gabrielle tilted her head around to gaze up at his face, still shadowed and dark with mystery. "How did this Greek warrior manage to kill her then, without looking at her?"

Max smiled and his eyes glinted brightly, a flash of silver, quickly extinguished. "Don't be so fiercely practical. I don't know how he did it. I think he had the help of some woman." Gabrielle sniffed, and he squeezed her shoulder playfully. "Quit interrupting the story."

She turned back within the bowl of his arms. Laying her head against his shoulder, she looked up at the configuration of stars that Max had said was the Greek warrior Perseus. ' 'What happened then, after he killed that woman with snakes for hair?"

"He was on his way home with Medusa's head when he saw a beautiful girl chained to a rock on a seashore. She was to be a sacrifice to appease some wicked sea monster. Her name was Andromeda, and he fell instantly and hopelessly in love with her. With his sword he broke the chains that bound her, and then he turned the monster to stone by showing it Medusa's head. He offered Andromeda the gift of either freedom or his love, one or the other but not both."

Tears welled up in Gabrielle's eyes and her throat seemed to swell, making it difficult to swallow. Irrational anger filled her, and she pulled out of his arms, going to the stone wall that defined the esplanade. The placid water of the Seine was a black mirror that reflected the star-emblazoned sky above.

She heard his step on the gravel behind her.

She whirled to face him. "Why couldn't she have both?"

His hands closed over her upper arms, then moved up her shoulders to cup her neck. "It wasn't possible to have both. Perhaps it wasn't necessary."

"Then which did she choose?"

Her mouth was set in anger. He traced the contour of her lips until they softened and parted, and he saw her tremble. "Love, of course. Was there ever any doubt?"

She averted her eyes. "It isn't a true story. It's only a myth."

"But the Greeks," he said softly, "believed. And Perseus and Andromeda, and the love they shared, live forever. In the stars."

His fingers played along the flesh of her neck to become entwined in her hair, and he tipped her head back for his kiss.

His mouth closed over hers, claiming her. Her lips, cold from the night air, warmed and parted with a soft, gentle sigh. Her hands cupped his neck, pulling him closer, and she flattened her breasts tight against his chest, molding herself to the hard planes and angles of his body. He slid his tongue over her lips, and she opened her mouth, giving herself to him with the same sweet abandon as she had shown that afternoon.

Nothing mattered but this moment, with this man. The past was insignificant, the future uncertain. Nothing mattered but the night and the stars and the memory of the way his voice had woven a mythical song of love, offering it as a gift meant only for her.

But the kiss, the moment, couldn't last forever. His lips parted from hers, and his fingers released her hair. She let go of him as well, backing up a step, so that they no longer touched. They stood apart, and it wouldn't have surprised her if he had left her then, abandoned her alone in the middle of the dark Tuileries park without another word.

But he didn't leave her. "Let's find a cafe," he said, and the lilting happiness in his voice infected her so that she smiled. "Somewhere cozy and crowded where we can share a glass of brandy and tell each other our life stories."