Storm Winds (17 page)

There was no answer.

He knocked again. Louder.

No answer.

The thunder of the third knock could be heard halfway down the street.

The door was thrown open by a tall, lean woman in a black gown. “Stop,” she hissed. “Do you want to wake the neighborhood. Go away.”

“I must see the Marquise de Clement.”

“In the middle of the night?” The woman was outraged. “This is no time for calls.”

“Let us see my mother, Marguerite.” Juliette pushed in front of him into the light. “Where is she?”

“In her bedchamber, but you can’t—”

Juliette brushed her aside and entered the elegant, venetian-tiled foyer. “Upstairs?”

“Yes, but you’re not to disturb her. The poor lamb has enough to worry about without you coming to torment her.” Marguerite’s disdainful gaze traveled over the torn, bloodstained ruin of Juliette’s gray gown. “I see those nuns haven’t been able to make a gentlewoman out of you in all these years. What trouble are you in now?”

“This is Marguerite, my mother’s servant,” Juliette said to François as she moved toward the stairs. “Come along, you won’t be satisfied until you see for yourself.”

She quickly climbed the stairs, her back very straight.

“She has no time for you,” Marguerite called from the bottom of the stairs. “She’s sent a footman to hire a carriage to take her away from this horrible city and it will be here any moment.”

A door at the head of the stairs flew open. “Marguerite, what is that—” Celeste de Clement stopped in mid-sentence as she caught sight of Juliette. “Good God, what are you doing here?”

Juliette had not seen her mother since she had entered the abbey but there appeared to be little change in her. She might be even more beautiful. Celeste’s sea-green velvet gown flattered her tiny waist and a cream-colored lace fichu framed the smooth olive skin of her shoulders. Her shining dark hair was unpowdered and fell in fashionable ringlets about her heart-shaped face. “I’ve come to throw myself on your loving
protection.” Juliette’s tone was threaded with irony. “The Abbaye de la Reine was attacked by a mob tonight, and my friend, Catherine, and I need a place to hide.”

“They’re killing everyone in the prisons.” Celeste shuddered. “I didn’t know they’d attacked the abbey too. No one told me.”

“I believe it’s considered customary to express curiosity about one’s daughter’s welfare in these circumstances. If someone had told you, would you have come running to my aid?”

Her mother bit her lower lip. “Why are you here? You know I can’t help you. I can barely help myself. Do you realize that
canaille
Berthold has told me to leave his house? He says the times are growing too dangerous for him to risk harboring a marquise.” Her violet eyes glittered with anger. “After I lowered myself to welcome that bourgeois pig to my bed, he abandons me when I most need him. Now I must return to Spain to that boring house in Andorra until I can think what next to do.”

She stiffened as her gaze fell on François standing on the steps behind Juliette. “Who is this man?”

“François Etchelet. He brought me here from the abbey.”

“Then let him help you.” Her mother whirled in a flurry of sea-green velvet, marched back into her chamber, and slammed the door.

“Are you satisfied?” Juliette asked François without expression.

“No.” Frustration and exasperation sharpened François’s voice. “You’re her responsibility and she has to care for you.” He climbed the staircase two steps at a time and yanked open the door to the bedchamber.

Celeste de Clement looked up with wide, startled eyes from the portmanteau she was packing.

“How dare you? I told you—”

“She needs your help,” François said curtly. “She’ll probably be arrested if she’s found in Paris in the next few days.”

“What about me?” Celeste asked shrilly. “Do you know how dangerous it is for me to be here without
protection? Do you realize how many members of the nobility have been arrested in the past week? And now those horrid beasts are murdering and killing and—”

“Raping,” Juliette finished from the doorway.

“Well, I’m sure you weren’t troubled,
ma fille
.” Her mother tossed a yellow taffeta petticoat into the bag. “After all, you’re not at all pretty.”

Pretty? What did appearances have to do with that horror at the abbey? Juliette gazed at her in disbelief as she remembered the child Henriette and the Reverend Mother. She turned to François. “May we go now?”

François stubbornly shook his head, his gaze on her mother. “She’s your daughter. Take her with you.”

“Impossible. No aristocrats are being given passes to leave the city. I had to make a bargain with that beast Marat to get one for myself. It’s not at all fair. That pig thinks I’ll send it, but he’ll find I’m not so easily cowed—” She broke off and turned back to her packing. “Juliette will have to shift for herself.”

When had she ever done anything else? Juliette walked out of the room and down the stairs.

François was behind her by the time she reached the bottom of the staircase. “She has no right to refuse you. The two of you are no longer my responsibility,” he said fiercely.

“Then leave us in the street and go about your business.” Juliette’s tone was equally fierce. Strange how raw she felt after seeing her mother. The interview had gone just as she expected, and she should really be numb to pain after the events of this night.

Marguerite smiled smugly as she held open the door for them. “I told you it would do you no good to see her. You were stupid to think—”

Etchelet’s breath exploded in a harsh rush. Juliette saw only a blur of movement. Yet Marguerite was suddenly jammed up against the wall with a dagger pressed to her long neck. “You said? I don’t believe I could have heard you correctly.”

Marguerite squealed, her eyes bulging as she gazed down at the knife.

Etchelet pressed the knife until a drop of blood ran down Marguerite’s neck. “You said, Citizeness?”

“Nothing,” she squeaked. “I said nothing.”

Juliette watched the wildness flicker in Etchelet’s taut face. For an instant she thought he would push the blade home, but he slowly lowered it and stepped back. A moment later he slammed the door behind them.

François sheathed his knife in his boot. “I lost my temper. I’ve been trying to keep from striking out since I arrived at that abbey and of a sudden I snapped. But I shouldn’t have frightened the servant when it was the mistress I wanted to skewer.”

“You didn’t like my mother?” Juliette asked. “How extraordinary. Most gentlemen do.”

“Do you have any friends or other relations in Paris?”

Juliette shook her head.

“There must be someone. What of Citizeness Vasaro?”

“Catherine’s guardian is Jean Marc Andreas. He has a house on the Place Royale but he’s not in residence at present.”

“Not the Place Royale.” François’s brow was creased in thought as he told her absently, “It’s the Place de l’Indivisibilité now.”

“Mother of God, not again? How does anyone find his way around the city? Such stupidity.” Juliette enunciated precisely. “Number Eighteen Place Royale.”

“Are there servants?”

Juliette shrugged. “I don’t know and I can’t ask Catherine.”

“No, you can’t ask her.” François’s gaze went to the carriage and Juliette again noticed that curiously intent expression on his face. “She’s not … well.”

Danton gazed quizzically down at them as they approached. “The marquise was not obliging?”

François shook his head. “The marquise is a bitch.”

“What a pity. I suppose you’ll just have to take these forlorn women to your bosom and care for them yourself.”

“The devil I will.” François opened the door of the
carriage and half lifted, half pushed Juliette onto the seat next to Catherine. For the briefest instant his gaze rested on Catherine’s delicate features before he continued. “I detest spoiling your amusement, Georges Jacques, but when you feel you can bestir yourself, take us to the Place Royale.”

Danton’s lips twitched. “Place Royale? I do believe you’re being corrupted by these aristos.”

“I mean the Place de l’Indivisibilité.” François slammed the door of the carriage shut.

T
hirty-six houses surrounded the elegant square. All were similar in architecture with their steeply slanted slate roofs and dormer windows but each possessed unique trimmings … and secrets. Beyond the brick and stone façades lay delightful courtyards and enchanting gardens where graceful fountains sprayed sparkling water and one could sit on marble benches and breathe in the intoxicating fragrance of roses and violets.

How did she know about those gardens? Catherine wondered numbly. Then she realized it was because Jean Marc lived in one of these houses. They were standing before the door of Jean Marc’s house on the Place Royale and someone was pounding on the front door. She hadn’t gone there since Jean Marc had invited her for Christmas three years before. He had surprised her with a splendid blue gown made from measurements
the seamstress had received from the Mother Superior. She had been so disappointed Philippe had not been there to see her in it. Philippe had once told her he liked her in blue and she had—

Philippe
.

Pain spiraled through her and she quickly drew the mist of numbness about her again.

François was forced to knock repeatedly before the door was opened a narrow crack to reveal the frightened face of a man in his twilight years. Wrinkles seamed his thin face and sparse white hair clung in tufts to his shiny pink scalp. As soon as he caught sight of François through the crack, he started to swing the door shut.

François pushed the door open and stepped into the marble foyer. “Make up two bedchambers.” He pulled Juliette and Catherine into the hall. “These ladies will be staying here for the next few days. However, as far as anyone else is concerned, the house is still unoccupied. Do you understand?”

“See here, you can’t walk in here and …” He met François’s gaze and his words trailed off as his glance slid away toward Juliette and Catherine. He stiffened and raised the candelabrum in his hand higher. “Mademoiselle Catherine?”

Juliette stepped forward. “She’s been injured and needs to be nursed. What’s your name?”

“Robert Dameraux. I’m head gardener for Monsieur Andreas and I care for the house when he’s in Marseilles.” His gaze was still fixed on Catherine.
“Pauvre petite
. So pale …”

“Robert.” Catherine’s vague gaze focused on his deeply lined face. “Violets. You gave me white violets.”

The old man nodded. “When you were a child you loved my flowers.”

“They looked so … clean. Like nothing had touched them since the beginning of time. I thought—” She swayed and would have fallen if the young man had not caught and steadied her. She couldn’t remember who he was. François, yes, that was his name. He and Juliette had been arguing in the coach.…

“A bedchamber,” he repeated curtly as he lifted Catherine in his arms.

Robert nodded and scurried ahead of them across the foyer and up the staircase.

François tightened his grip around Catherine’s body and started across the foyer. Catherine saw their reflections in the gilt-framed mirror affixed to the far wall. She could hardly recognize her own tattered, dirty image while he looked solid, dark, and formidably male. Catherine stiffened as panic soared through her. She mustn’t let him touch her. She mustn’t let any man touch her. Pain. Filth. She’d never be clean again.

“Stop trembling. I won’t hurt you.” His low voice was rough, but there was such raw force in his words, Catherine found herself relaxing. Juliette was right behind them on the stairs and was not objecting. If the man was a threat, Juliette would not have let him carry her. She could trust Juliette, if not the man who held her.

He was very strong, she thought remotely, stronger than he looked, the sinewy muscles hard and inflexible beneath the wool of his coat. His throat was only a few inches away, and she could see the throb of his heart in the hollow. She found herself staring at that rhythmic pulse in fascination. Life. She had never seen anyone so robustly alive. His face was hard, shuttered, and yet those glittering green eyes betrayed a restless male energy beneath the expressionless features.

Male
. She shuddered and suddenly those fierce eyes were fastened on her face. He stared at her intently for a moment before shifting his gaze to Robert, who had reached the landing at the top of the stairs.

A moment later Robert opened the third door on the left and preceded them into a chamber. “You remember this room, Mademoiselle? You always liked a room overlooking my garden.”

Yes. She dimly recalled the wall hangings and bedcovers of blue watered silk with lilac and silver borders, the Sèvres plaque on the wall. She had sat for hours on that window seat, watching Robert work in the garden.

“Dieu
, it smells musty in here.” Juliette crossed the room and threw open the casement window.

“The house has been closed for over a year,” Robert said defensively. “You gave us no warning. You can’t expect it to—”

“I’ll need warm water and clean linen, something for us both to sleep in and wear tomorrow. Anything will do,” Juliette interrupted. “Are there any other servants in the house?”

“My wife, Marie. She’s still in bed and—”

“I can’t do everything myself for Mademoiselle Catherine.” Juliette strode toward the door. “Come, we’ll roust your wife from her bed.”

Juliette was ordering everyone about again, Catherine realized dimly. Poor Robert, she should really say something to Juliette.

“Why are you just standing there holding her?” Juliette tossed over her shoulder at François. “Put her down on the bed.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she marched from the chamber.

François muttered something under his breath as he strode toward the bed.

“Don’t be angry with her. It’s her way,” Catherine whispered as he laid her on the silken coverlet.

“A virago’s way.”

“No, she means well.” Why was she defending Juliette? What did it matter what this stranger thought? She closed her eyes and tried to go back into the comforting, mindless haze she had managed to gather about her in the coach.