Velvet (36 page)

“Come on, Jake.”

The little boy’s terrified face appeared in the opening, and he half fell, half jumped into his father’s arms.

Gabrielle swung herself down awkwardly because of her cramped muscles and stretched with an almost inaudible moan of pain.

“All right?” Nathaniel asked evenly, still holding the child.

She nodded. “A bit stiff … nothing worse … thank God.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said in the same even tones.

“Where to?”

“Truly underground,” he said with a bleak attempt at a smile. “At least for tonight.”

Carrying the child, he led the way back through the houses until they reached number thirteen. They crept downstairs and out through a rear door into the courtyard where the rabbits lay in a somnolent heap in their cage.

“We must hurry,” Nathaniel whispered, looking up into the sky where the first faint streaks of gray were showing.

They slipped through a gate into another alley, and Nathaniel strode quickly ahead, his speed unaffected by the child’s weight in his arms. Gabrielle half ran to keep up with him.

They came to a small church with cracked, moldering stone walls and slates tumbling from a sagging roof. Its tumbledown air struck Gabrielle as pathetic, like someone whose offers of comfort have been inexplicably spurned. She assumed it had fallen into disrepair during the Revolution, when organized religion was banned and no one had any use for churches.

Nathaniel looked up and down the alley, then walked rapidly around the side of the building. A flight of crumbling stone steps led down into the crypt. Gabrielle followed him down. He felt in a niche in the wall, drew out a key, fitted it into the tarnished brass lock, and the door creaked open, emitting a waft of air, cold as the grave and heavy with the reek of ancient stone and damp earth.

“I don’t like it here,” Jake whimpered as they entered the dank darkness and Nathaniel pulled the door closed behind them. “I want to go out.”

“Hush now, I’m here,” Nathaniel soothed. “You’re quite safe.”

“But it’s spooky.”

“Yes, it is,” Gabrielle agreed, making her voice bright and cheerful. “But I’m sure we can light the candle.”

“Can you find it?” Nathaniel asked in the same
easy tones, as if this were all quite normal. “There’s flint and tinder somewhere in the portmanteau.”

Gabrielle felt in the darkness through the small pile of possessions, found the requisite articles, and in a minute the welcoming glow of the candle threw some illumination.

It was not a cheerful place, Gabrielle thought in understatement, looking around at the oozing stone walls, the cracked greenish slabs beneath her feet.

“Is this another safe house?”

“More like sanctuary,” Nathaniel said as if it were perfectly ordinary to make witticisms in such circumstances. “The church is disused and the crypt’s an emergency shelter to be used only in dire emergency,” he added. “We should find some blankets and a lantern somewhere, and some basic supplies.”

“Over there.” Gabrielle pointed to a tomb where a fully armed stone knight stretched out in perpetuity, hands piously crossed over his breast. A mound of blankets and a lantern with a small jar of oil stood at the base of the tomb. There was a flagon of water and several slabs of chocolate. A slop pail stood on the floor. Apart from that, there was nothing but the graves of the dead.

“A trifle cheerless,” Gabrielle observed in what she hoped was a tone to match Nathaniel’s. “Let’s see if this will make a difference.” She filled the lantern with oil and lit the wick.

Jake promptly howled and buried his face in his father’s shoulder as the grotesque shapes of armored knights and mitred stone bishops danced on the vaulted ceiling.

Nathaniel gentled him, stroking his back as he sat on the tomb, settling the child in his lap. Jake pushed his thumb into his mouth and rocked himself in his father’s arms, suddenly overcome with emotional and physical exhaustion.

Nathaniel regarded Gabrielle, his eyes unreadable in the flickering gloom. “How did you find out about the raid?”

“After I sent you the message telling you that Fouché knew you were in Paris—”

“What message?” The interrogatory crackled in the dank chill. “I got only one, the day before yesterday, and it said nothing about Fouché.”

“But I sent you a message via the flower seller this morning … well, yesterday morning now.”

“I never received it.”

“What could have happened to it?”

Nathaniel gazed bleakly over the child’s head. “It’s a bit late to worry about that now. How did he know I was here?”

“One of his men spotted you, apparently. I assume there are people who would recognize you.”

“It’s never happened before,” Nathaniel said flatly. If Gabrielle had betrayed him to Fouché, why would she then risk her neck to save him? Belated remorse? That seemed too indecisive for Gabrielle. No, probably he’d been recognized at one of the checkpoints on the journey from Cherbourg. It was always a risk.

“Well, it happened this time,” Gabrielle declared, tension and fatigue putting a sting in her voice. “And then tonight I was at a soiree at Madame de Staél’s and Fouché was boasting about some coup he was going to pull off. I didn’t know if he meant he’d found you, but I thought I’d better warn you just in case. And then I ran into his men …” She spread her hands, palm up.

“I suppose you followed the messenger yesterday?”

She nodded.

Nathaniel stroked Jake’s head thoughtfully. Gabrielle had risked her life to save him. It had been a most decisive choice. He wrapped a blanket securely around the shivering child. A permanent choice or simply an emotional response?

“You’d better go back before you’re missed,” he said. “Jake and I will stay here for today, and move on this evening.”

Gabrielle stood looking at him in the gloom as he sat holding the child on the tomb. It was a dreadful place to spend the long hours of the day. The tensions of the night were apparent now in the taut lines of his face, shadowed with the blue tinge of his nighttime beard, and his eyes were sunken with fatigue.

“I’ll come back later, then.” She went to the door.

“Gabrielle.” His voice was soff.

“Yes.” She turned back.

“I owe you my life. Mine and Jake’s.” His face was in shadow, but she could sense his stillness, the deadly seriousness of his statement.

“What else did you expect me to do when my spymaster was in danger?” She tried to invest the question with a lightness, as if it were partly a joke, but it didn’t come out right. She sounded ungracious, impatient almost.

“I don’t know what I expected,” he responded quietly.

“Oh, well, I’m full of surprises.” She tried a smile. “I’d better go. I’ll come back this evening.”

Without waiting for a response, she slipped through the door into the now-clear light of dawn and left Nathaniel and his son in the lantern shadows of the crypt.

Gabrielle de Beaucaire was certainly full of surprises, Nathaniel reflected. She’d made a choice that day that made no sense for the ruthless, skilled, and experienced opponent he knew her to be.

Where did that leave
his
plans?

Impossible to decide at this point. Jake stirred and whimpered in his arms, and Nathaniel stroked his head, murmuring soft words of reassurance until the child was still again.

Nathaniel shifted on the tomb until his back was
against the oozing wail of the crypt. He closed his eyes. Helen’s face came to him in the dank, frigid air of this grim tomb … her face as it had been on her deathbed. White, bloodless, the lines of suffering smoothed by the hand of death. His hold tightened involuntarily around her child.

It was eight o’clock that night when Nathaniel emerged from the crypt, holding Jake’s hand, the portmanteau slung over his shoulder. He locked the door, replaced the key in the wall niche for the next person in dire need of sanctuary, and climbed the steps.

Jake was silent, clinging to his father’s hand. He was frightened, but his relief at leaving their hiding place far surpassed his fear. He was sucking a piece of chocolate, holding it in his cheek, the warm sweetness melting over his tongue. It reminded him of safe and comforting things like his bed in the nursery, and Neddy, and the way Primmy smelled when she kissed him, a faded, sweetish smell like the dried flowers in the still room.

A tall, cloaked figure separated itself from the shadows at the top of the steps.

Nathaniel froze even as recognition hit him, Jake jumped and spoke her name before he remembered he wasn’t to speak.

“Shh,” Gabrielle said, putting a finger on her lips, smiling at him in the darkness.

“What the hell do you mean, jumping out on me
like that?” Nathaniel demanded in an outraged whisper. “I expected you in the crypt at dusk.”

“It took me a while to arrange everything,” she whispered, seemingly unperturbed by his anger. “I have a
laissez passer
for you.” Her crooked smile gleamed white in the gloom. “With it, you can go anywhere in the city … stay at an inn, travel wherever you wish.”

She reached into the pocket of her cloak and pulled out the precious document. “See. It’s in the name of Gilbert Delors, a servant in the household of Monsieur le Prince de Talleyrand, who’s instructed to journey to his master’s estates in Perigord and is to be allowed to pass without let or hindrance.”

“How on earth did you get hold of this?” He stared at the paper.

“i stole it,” she said. “You see, it’s signed by Talleyrand’s steward.” She pointed to the signature. “The real Gilbert Delors has been turning the house upside down looking for it all day. When he came out of the steward’s office, I had a most urgent errand for him to run, an armful of parcels that needed to be taken immediately to my chamber. He put the paper on the table when I filled his arms with packages … et voila.”

Nathaniel turned the document over in his hands. It was Jake’s passport to safety. He could leave Paris, travel anywhere in the country without question. He could arrange passage on a regular
paquet
at Calais rather than wait in danger for the eventual return of the fishing boat.

Gabrielle certainly didn’t do things by halves, he thought. He had a sudden absurd urge to laugh, to fling his arms around her and dance a jig as relief coursed through his veins, and he felt his muscles relax as he stepped back from the brink of the precipice for the first time since they’d reached Paris.

“Let’s go and find some supper,” he said. “And a decent bed.”

“Ah, well, I have that all planned too,” Gabrielle said with a mysterious smile. “There are certain establishments where a man can take a woman, no questions asked.” She let her cloak fall open, and Nathaniel’s eyes glazed.

Gabrielle was wearing a gown of crimson velvet edged with tawdry lace. The décolletage was so low, it barely covered her nipples, and the skirt was caught up to reveal a petticoat hiked well above her ankles, ankles that were clad in what looked to his astonished gaze to be cotton stockings. On her feet she wore a pair of down-at-heel black shoes with paste buckles.

“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. “What game are you playing?”

“A brigand’s game,” she said with a roguish gleam in her eye. She too seemed infected with an almost manic edge of delight. “Who’s to question a servant and his whore in Pigalle?”

Nathaniel shook his head as if trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain. “Jake … ?”

“He’ll be quite safe with us. He’s too young to understand anything about the place, and it’ll be a lot safer and more comfortable than hiding from secret police in crypts.”

“And what do
you
know of such places?” Nathaniel demanded.

“Well, if you must know, I had a lover,” Gabrielle said nonchalantly. “We used to have our assignations there. Come on, we’ll find a carriage at Notre Dame.”

“What?
Come back here!” Nathaniel grabbed her arm as she was about to prance off down the street.

Gabrielle grinned at him. “You’re not going to be a prude, are you?” Wisping river mist from the Seine clung to the dark red hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, and the charcoal eyes were alight with the challenge and mischief that he hadn’t seen for an eternity, it seemed.

Jake suddenly tugged at his father’s hand. He didn’t
understand what Gabby and Papa were talking about, but the chocolate had melted in his mouth and now he was cold and hungry and tired again.

“Papa.” The single word was a small, undifferentiated plea that caught their attention as nothing else could have at that moment.

Nathaniel bent and picked him up. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, Gabrielle,” he said. “But let’s get going.”

She seemed to have wings on her feet, he thought, following her exuberant progress to Notre Dame. There were several hackney carriages in the square before the cathedral. Gabrielle gestured to one with a vulgar flick of her Angers and, in accents of the streets, engaged the driver in a ribald exchange that had Nathaniel torn between laughter and total bemusement.

She jumped into the carriage, took a bewildered but compliant Jake from him, settling him on the seat beside her as his father climbed in and closed the door.