Seduction (25 page)

Julianne watched him leave. Then she ran to the door and slammed it closed, collapsing against it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D
OMINIC
FOLLOWED
the D’Archand’s servant into the salon to await Nadine, remembering the sight of Julianne closing the right-hand drawer of his
secrétaire
when he had paused on the threshold of the room. His gut churned.
She had gone through his desk.

Surely she was not spying on him for her radical friends. But she had told him already that her Jacobin friends in Paris had asked her to locate an émigré family that had settled in Cornwall; what else had they asked her?

He did not want to believe it.

Nadine appeared on the room’s threshold, interrupting his dark thoughts. She was wearing pale pink, a color that suited her olive complexion, and her smile was reflected in her eyes. In that moment, she reminded him of the woman he had known since childhood. But his mood did not lighten. Nadine was a friend and an ally; he trusted her implicitly; he would trust her with his life. But he could not trust Julianne, the woman who was his lover—the woman he cared for.

“I was wondering when you would call again,” she said, a question in her eyes.

He came forward, taking both of her hands and kissing each cheek in turn. “All you had to do was ask.”

“I thought we both needed some time to adjust to being reunited, after such a long separation.”

He guided her to the sofa. Nadine had always been a thoughtful and deliberate person. Her comment did not surprise him. “We have always thought alike. I also needed some time to adjust to our circumstances.”

She studied him as she settled comfortably on the sofa, taking his hand and clasping it warmly—a habit he had forgotten. “I can see that you are worried, Dom. It is mirrored in your eyes.”

He hesitated. He meant to tell her about Julianne, but he needed to carefully segue into the topic. “I have a great deal on my mind, relating to the war and the revolution.”

“Is there news?”

“There is always news.” To divert her, he said, “The Duke of York has decided to besiege Dunkirk, which would be a great prize for London. But I believe York should be marching on Paris.”

“I agree, the road to Paris will not remain open indefinitely, but I am hardly a general.” She shrugged, quiet for a moment. “What is wrong?”

He finally smiled. “I have come into the habit of brooding, Nadine.”

She didn’t smile back at him. “We have both changed so much, haven’t we, Dom? After all we have gone through, it feels as if I danced all those nights away with a someone else—someone without real cares, without any comprehension of war and death.”

“It does feel that way,” he said. “We were so innocent, weren’t we? To think that I used to consider a crisis the failure of a tenant to pay his rents.... I never thought of you as young or naive when we became engaged, but you are so much worldlier now, it is almost as if you are an entirely different woman.”

She shook her head. “I can barely recognize that young girl. She did not have a clue as to the misery and brutality that exists in the world. She had no worries, no real concerns—she was happy, all of the time! Who is happy all of the time, Dominic?” She added, “I have a habit of brooding now, too.”

He said carefully, “You seem happy enough today.”

“I am happy to be with you.” She said softly, “You changed the subject, cleverly, but not cleverly enough. So what is truly bothering you?”

There was no getting past the discussion, he realized. He studied her for another moment, and her gaze was serious and searching. “We have to discuss our affairs, Nadine, but I don’t want to distress you—that is not my intention. You have been through enough.”

She lay her hand on his forearm. “We have always been honest with one another. I refuse to be any other way with you. If there is something you wish to say, even if you feel it might be distressing, you must say so anyway.” She added, “You might be surprised, Dominic. Very little distresses me these days—outside of death and anarchy, war and revolution.”

She was right. They had always been honest with one another, and he had come to tell her about Julianne. He owed her that—he owed Julianne. “I was not truthful when I told your family that I had spent the past months in the country.”

She smiled. “I know.” She stood, moved swiftly to the salon door, and glanced into the hall. Then she shut it and returned to the sofa, saying, “Have you been in France this entire time?”

But he was alarmed. “Do you think you are being spied upon?”

She hesitated. “We have so much to discuss.”

His eyes widened. She was leery of spies—in her own home! “Why would anyone spy on you?”

“Tell me why you felt that you needed to deceive my family, first.” She smiled fleetingly. “And I want to know what you were doing in France, and how long you were there.” She sat back down beside him.

“I have spent over a year and a half in France,” Dominic said. Vague, hazy, horrific images began to form. He would not allow them “When I found Catherine in Paris and we could not find you, I escorted her home—it was late November.” His mother and Nadine had gone to France in the spring of 1791. “I then returned to continue searching for you. I gave up after several months, but by then, I was already Jean Carre, a print shop owner and a Jacobin. I had learned so much about the Jacobins, including those in the National Assembly, that I realized I should stay, continue my charade and send what intelligence I could gather home.” He paused, thinking about his neighbors, whom he had had to deceive on a daily basis. He had taken tea with the baker, reveling in one republican triumph after another, but it had been a facade. He would return to his shop, close up for the evening and become Dominic Paget again.

“Go on,” she whispered.

“But in the spring, there were rumors of an uprising in le Loire. You can imagine how that affected—and excited—me. Those rumors included the name of the rebel leader—Jacquelyn.”

Her eyes widened. “Michel?” she gasped. “Michel—our Michel—leads the La Vendée rebels?”

“Yes. Michel is alive and well and courageously fighting the French army at every turn. I joined him last May.”

“You were there at Saumur?” she cried, aghast.

“We captured an entire division in early May, then consolidated control of the river and town in June.” He knew he must hold the memories at bay, but they had begun to become focused in his mind. The dead and dying in the bloody river, Father Pierre, lifeless in his arms, Michel screaming that they must retreat.

“Dominic.” Nadine clasped his cheek, her gaze worried.

He jerked back to the present. “I am sorry. We were defeated outside Nantes at the end of June.”

“I heard. I cannot believe you were there—thousands died! How is Michel?”

“The last time I saw him, alive and well and determined.”

“Is there a way I can get a letter to him?”

He started.

“He is my friend—I have known him for years.”

“Yes, there is a way to reach him,” Dominic said. He hesitated.

She took his hand in both of hers. “There is bad news, isn’t there?”

“Do you remember Father Pierre?”

“Of course I do. He married my cousin Lucien—he buried my mother.”

“He died in that last battle.”

She choked. “He was an old man! He was fighting the French army?”

Dominic nodded, putting his arm around her.

She trembled, but did not move into his arms as she would have done two years ago. He reached into his coat pocket and handed her a kerchief, which she dabbed against her eyes. She was, he saw, determined not to cry. “When will this bloody war end?” she asked tersely.

“I don’t know.”

She pulled away and he let her go, but she looked at him. “The war has changed me, Nadine,” Dominic said. “And it has also changed my life.”

“Of course it has. No one can be the same. Not if you have lived through a single battle, a single riot.” She inhaled. “I am not the same.”

“But you remain a beautiful and intelligent woman—more so than ever. You remain extraordinary.”

Her eyes were wide and riveted upon him. “Why am I certain that you are about to let me down, somehow?”

He found it hard to speak now. “My feelings for you have not changed. I am your most ardent admirer, your most loyal friend. But I have changed, Nadine, greatly, and I will never be able to go from ball to ball with you again.”

She stared, hands clasped. “I would dearly love to go to a ball. But it would feel a bit absurd. What are you trying to say?”

“I cannot marry right now. In fact, I don’t know if I will ever think of marriage again.”

She stared, clearly surprised, but otherwise, he could not tell what she was thinking. Once, she had been so transparent! “I know there are contracts. I know I gave my word. But marriage has become an impossibility.”

“I see,” she said. And then, very softly, “You are going back, aren’t you? You will return to your print shop and your life as Jean Carre.”

A lie formed, on the tip of his tongue. But he had known her for too long, and he trusted her with this secret. “I will take up a new alias, actually.”

She breathed hard. “I want to go back with you.”

“Absolutely not!” He was aghast. He had expected her to, perhaps, make a plea to continue the engagement—not this. “Why would you want to go back to France? This isn’t about our engagement, is it?”

She stood, her dark eyes flashing. “No, it’s not. I have my own story to tell, Dom. I suffered grave injuries in the riot, but broken bones heal in months—not a year and a half.”

He stared up at her. He had wondered what had taken her so long to return to Britain.

“I was rescued from the mob by a kindly shopkeeper,” Nadine said. She was pale now. “He witnessed the riot, and after the mob left, he found me unconscious in the street. He thought I was dead, but I was very much alive and he took me in. His wife and daughter cared for me until I healed. They are wonderful, good, simple people, who live in fear that their treason to the state will one day be found out.”

He stood and took her hand, aware of the anguish she was fighting. “Do you remain in contact with them?”

“No, it would put them in jeopardy.”

His mind turned that over. “What kept you from coming home immediately?”

She shrugged free of his grasp and slowly paced. “I discovered a mother and her daughter, hiding in a vacated shop, terrified for their lives,” she said, pausing before a window and staring at the gardens outside. “They were from a titled family. That was their crime. Her husband had been dragged from his bed in their home in Marseilles, and clubbed to death—in front of their daughter. Both women were raped. Marianne and Jeanine were then left as rubbish. They fled to Paris, hoping to find relatives. They did not—their family was gone. I hid them in an empty cellar for several months while I endeavored to find the means to transport them to Le Havre and then on to Britain. Eventually I made the right contact. I met a Frenchman in the gendarmerie who is actually a royalist—I believe he might still be in the police, actively aiding and abetting people like Marianne and Jeanine. Or, he could have been found out. And he could be dead.” She turned to face him now.

“You could have been found out,” he said quietly.

“Yes. Once I had my contact, Marianne and Jeanine were on their way to safety. And I had learned that I could help people like them, like me, escape the horrors of the Cordeliers, the Brissotins, the Girondins—the Jacobins. Marianne and Jeanine were the first of a dozen men, women and sometimes children that I helped smuggle through France.”

“What you did was courageous, Nadine—and dangerous. Thank God you got out of France safely.”

“I have no regrets.”

“I won’t allow you to return to France. You can help us here, in Britain, instead of returning to France where you will surely, eventually, be uncovered and executed.”

She trembled. “A part of me dreads going back. I lived in constant fear, and I am hardly deluded! In fact, the reason I went home was not just because I missed my father and sisters. A haut gendarme was terribly interested in me. I believed he had learned the truth and that it was no longer safe for me to stay in Paris.”

“Then I am grateful you left when you did,” he said. Now he understood her fears of spies—perhaps, she was being hunted by French agents. “Stay here in Britain, Nadine, and I will put you in touch with the right men—men who are in need of your talents and skills.”

She hugged herself, as if her bare arms were cold. “You shouldn’t go back, either.”

“I am going back.” He was firm.

And then he saw the tears that had arisen in her eyes. “You never cry.”

She brushed at them. “I have learned how to cry, Dominic.” She hesitated. “You said your feelings for me haven’t changed, but I am sensing that they have changed. And if they have, I understand. I am not the same woman you left at a ball two years ago, just as you are not the same man. Neither one of us has time for romance now.”

He tensed, instantly thinking of Julianne. He wondered if he should conceal the fact that he was involved with her. Carefully, he said, “You are not arguing for our marriage.”