Surrender to a Stranger (31 page)

“Come over to the fire where it is warm,” instructed the maid as she began to gather up Jacqueline’s clothes from the floor.

Jacqueline obediently went to the fire, which was now crackling brightly. She waited there until the woman returned with her clothes, and then she dropped her blanket and began to dress.

“There now,” declared the maid as she fastened the last hook. She was an older woman, with a kind, mothering manner that Jacqueline found comforting. “Now, sit yourself here and we will see what can be done with your hair.”

Jacqueline sat down in the chair and waited while the woman quickly worked a brush through her hair and then pinned it in a loose chignon. There was no mirror in the room for her to see herself, but the maid worked with such speed and proficiency Jacqueline felt confident her appearance was more than acceptable. If anyone did see her before she made it back into her room at the Harringtons’, at least she would not look like a woman who has been out making love half the night.

“Thank you for your help,” murmured Jacqueline as the maid adjusted the last pin. “Tell me, what is your name?”

The woman smiled. “I am Madame Bonnard,” she informed her.

Jacqueline looked up at her, taking in her delicate features, her warm, green eyes, and her wavy blond hair, which was slightly streaked with gray and worn in a loose braid down her back. She felt there was something vaguely familiar about her, but she was not sure why. She was certain she had never met her before.

“Come, Mademoiselle,” said Madame Bonnard as she opened the door. “Your carriage is waiting.”

Jacqueline followed her down the stairs to the front hallway. Madame Bonnard left her there a moment while she went to fetch her cloak. Nervously Jacqueline looked about, wondering where Armand was, dreading the possibility that he might appear at any moment to say good night. If he did appear, she would have utterly no idea what to do or say. She wrung her hands together and paced down the hall, wishing Madame Bonnard would return quickly so she could leave.

And then she saw it.

The envelope was propped against a slender crystal vase, in which a single crimson rose had been placed. Her name was scripted across the paper in bold, fluid strokes, leaving no doubt in her mind it was Armand’s handwriting. Confused as to why he would write her a note instead of bidding her good night personally, she picked up the creamy envelope and broke the seal.

Jacqueline,

I shall do everything within my power to see he is delivered to you safely.

If I do not return, remember, my rescue of you is one of my greatest achievements. Do not throw it away on something as meaningless as vengeance.

Armand

Black, cold fear began to grip her as the meaning of his words sank in. He had gone to rescue François-Louis. But how could he have left so quickly? It was the middle of the night. Surely he was still there, somewhere. She looked up from the note as Madame Bonnard returned with her cloak.

“Where is Monsieur St. James?” she demanded, her voice trembling slightly.

“Why, he is gone, Mademoiselle.”

“Gone?” repeated Jacqueline in disbelief. “Gone where?”

“He had some business to attend to at one of his estates in the north,” Madame Bonnard informed her. “He said he would be back in about two weeks.”

Numbly Jacqueline stood and allowed the woman to help her with her cloak as she absorbed that piece of information, Armand’s note still clutched in her hand. An icy blast of air slapped her in the face as Madame Bonnard opened the door for her. Tom was outside waiting with the carriage. She accepted his help as she climbed up into it. The air in the carriage was warm, having been heated by hot bricks wrapped in blankets, but Jacqueline was chilled to the bone. The carriage jerked into motion. Her mind reeling, she shivered with fear as she stared into the blackness of the countryside.

He was on his way to France. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain, and now he was about to fulfill his.

The city of Paris lay blanketed under a white shroud of fluffy snow. The flakes were piling up everywhere, topping the magnificent steeples, cupolas, slate roofs, and balconies like a glorious, feathery frosting. It had accumulated in the intricate niches of Notre Dame, that imposing structure that dominated the very heart of the city. The building was no longer a Christian cathedral as it had been since 1163, when Bishop Maurice de Sully ordered it built on a site that had been a place of worship from ancient times. Under the republican government’s new policy of dechristianization, the majestic edifice had been stripped of its sacred objects and rebaptized the Temple of Reason. Sacred or not, the snow continued to fall on it, as it had for hundreds of winters. It piled up on the thick balustrades of the arched bridges that joined the left and right banks of the city across the Seine. It covered the streets, temporarily masking the filth and garbage that were testimony to the miserable, crowded living conditions and the lack of sanitation. It fell on citizens and citizenesses as they went about their lives, indiscriminately covering red wool caps, stiff military hats, elaborate bonnets, and bare heads. It sifted its way down onto the Place de la Revolution, slowly floating over the steamy work of the guillotine before it landed on the blood-soaked ground. Some of the flakes melted immediately in the hot red liquid, while others piled onto the ground and absorbed the scarlet flow that gushed out of silent, mutilated bodies, which only moments earlier had been men and women who stood and watched the delicate wisps of frozen lace dance against the ashen sky.

Armand adjusted the rough wool collar of his coat and blew warm air on his fingers, which were aching and stiff from the cold. He gazed idly at the facade of the Luxembourg prison, assessing the size of its windows and their distance to the ground. No one thought it strange that he was doing so. To anyone who passed by he was just another bored, frozen street vendor, desperately trying to earn a few
livres
by selling his bottles of thin, homemade wine. If one could not afford the inflated prices set by the wine merchants who sold from their shops, then one could take a chance on the cheap wines that were sold in the streets, providing you did not mind the acidic taste or the terrible headache that was almost certain to accompany each bottle. For six days Armand had been selling wine from this spot, attracting no more attention than any other filthy, aged, desperate street vendor. It was a disguise that left him freezing most of the time, his back aching from standing bent over for hours, but it had enabled him to study the exterior of the prison in which François-Louis was incarcerated, and more importantly, to establish himself as a regular fixture outside that prison.

The Palais de Luxembourg was built by Marie de Medici, the wife and queen of Henry IV, who on the death of her husband decided she no longer wished to live in the Louvre. In 1615 she commissioned Salomon de Brosse to create a palace for her that would be reminiscent of the Florentine palaces she had been accustomed to before she left Italy to live in France. And so the Palais de Luxembourg was built, an elegant structure of large windows and rusticated stonework, consisting of a main pavilion covered by a cupola and framed by two tiers of ringed columns, with two other pavilions at the sides, joined to the central unit by galleries. The building had been taken over by the revolutionary government and was now a state prison, but its ugly new purpose could not destroy its architectural beauty, its spacious, light-filled interior, or the lovely gardens that surrounded it. It was considered by far the most pleasant prison in all of Paris. The prisoners incarcerated there were largely former nobles, men and women who were quite familiar with the gilded, ornate surroundings in which they were now held captive.

Armand could not help but be irritated that François-Louis was in such a comfortable prison, when Jacqueline and Antoine had been sent to that hellhole Conciergerie. It was well-known that the nobility imprisoned at the Luxembourg made every effort to carry on as if they were simply reluctant guests at someone else’s home, filling their days with salons and little gatherings in which they played cards, recited verse, played music, gossiped, and even put on little plays. Although the living conditions were not sumptuous, and occasionally one of the prisoners was taken away to appear before the Tribunal and then executed, the inmates at the Luxembourg were sheltered from the filth, sickness, squalor, and terror that was part of daily life in most of the other prisons of Paris.

The prison was quiet most of the time. A few new prisoners had been ushered through its doors at the beginning of the week, but Armand noticed that the only people who regularly came and went from the Luxembourg were the guards reporting for duty, and the people who delivered food, letters, and personal articles to the prison staff and inmates. In the few words he exchanged each day with the guards he noted that they were bored and cold, an attitude he would be counting on when he tried to get through the doors. With the calculated patience of a man who knows he must not make a move until exactly the right moment, he blew on his hands and stamped his feet, waiting for the light to fade and the day to grow even more frigid.

Although he fought against it, his mind drifted to Jacqueline. She had invaded his thoughts often this past week, despite his determination to keep his attention sharply focused on the task that lay before him. At night he found he could not sleep, and so he would finally relent and permit himself to lie awake and think of her. He tried to picture her in all the different ways he had seen her; a ragged yet defiant prisoner, a filthy, street wise sansculotte, an awkward, pregnant peasant wife, a pale and shivering patient, and finally, playing the role she had been born to, that of a gloriously regal and haughty aristocrat, who did not for a moment accept the idea that all men were created equal. But the image of her that kept returning the most was that of an achingly beautiful woman standing before the fire, clad only in her chemise, looking at him with a mixture of desire and uncertainty while apricot firelight danced against her creamy skin.

He had wanted her that night as he had never wanted any other woman, and the magnitude of his desire appalled him. He had thought to have her once, to show her for one night that he was more than an equal match for her, and to briefly block out the pain and guilt of his own past. He had also thought he would assuage the need that had been growing within him from the moment he first laid eyes on her. But far from satisfying his thirst, his night with her had increased it a thousandfold, leaving him bitter, restless, and unfulfilled. He knew she had agreed to sleep with him because it was the price he demanded to rescue her François-Louis, but something within him did not accept that was the only reason. Perhaps it was intuition, or perhaps it was just male vanity, but he could not believe she could have responded with such glorious passion had she not felt at least some attraction for him.

It does not matter, he reminded himself impatiently. She was not his and she never would be. She was betrothed to another, and she had made it clear she considered him beneath her. Her conviction that she was somehow his superior by right of birth infuriated him, but even if it were not so, there was no room in his life for a woman. With his frequent missions to France, his life was not his own. And France grew more dangerous by the hour. Of course he was always careful, but he knew it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out. He had understood that from the beginning, when the constant risk of discovery and death had been such a large part of the appeal for him. He did not care if he died. He had succeeded in saving dozens of lives, but all of them put together could not begin to make up for the three deaths he had been unable to prevent. The pain and guilt of it still tormented him, day after day, invading his thoughts and slashing into his soul until he wondered how he could bear it another moment. But he did bear it, and he went on, because to simply withdraw from the world in a drunken stupor and let himself rot would have been far, far too easy, and he had no desire to go easy on himself.

A robust, sour-faced woman came by and began to argue with him over the cost of his wine, interrupting his thoughts and forcing him to focus on the present. After a satisfactory period of loud and determined bartering on both sides, the woman bought two bottles. Once she was gone, Armand decided the day had advanced sufficiently for the guards on duty outside to be adequately bored, freezing, and ready for some diversion. Experiencing the familiar quickening sensation that coursed through his veins whenever he started to put a plan into action, he rubbed his hands together, picked up the wooden handles of his cart, and began to roll it slowly through the snow toward the entrance of the Luxembourg.

“Good day to you, Citizens,” he called out in a thin, raspy voice as he approached the two young guards who stood by the door.

“A slow day for you, eh, old man?” commented one of the guards.

Armand set down his cart and shrugged his shoulders. “Not so good,” he replied easily. “The snow does not help. Most people do not want to be out longer than is necessary, so they do not stop to buy. Which leaves me with all this wine and a very big problem,” he pronounced as he drew back the coarse brown blanket covering the dark bottles.

“What’s the problem?” demanded the other guard as he stared with interest at the wine.

Armand cocked his head to one side and scowled. “My wife,” he admitted in exasperation.

The two guards snorted with appreciative laughter, exposing dark, gap-filled smiles. “I know what you mean, old man,” declared one jokingly. “My wife could nag a man straight into his grave. At least there he would have some peace.” He laughed again.

Armand joined in the laughter, and then doubled over in a severe coughing fit, which sounded as if every breath he took might be his last. Finally he spat in the snow and looked up at them, shaking his head in apparent misery. “I am old, Citizens. I have been on the streets since dawn, and I am chilled to the bone. Yet if I return home now with so much wine unsold, my wife will make sure all of Paris hears her shrewish bellowing until morning.” He reached into his cart and pulled out one of the bottles. “Since I do not think I am up to it, I wish to make a proposition to you. If you find it agreeable, I believe we will all find the evening much more enjoyable.”

The two men looked at him with guarded interest. “What proposition?” one of them demanded.

“It is almost dinnertime for the prisoners, is it not?” Armand asked, raising the bottle to his mouth. He clamped his teeth on the cork and pulled it out.

“It is,” agreed the guard. “What of it?”

“Perhaps some of the former aristos in there would like to purchase a few bottles of wine to take them through dinner and into the night,” Armand suggested casually as he passed the bottle to the guard closest to him. “If you let me go in and do some business, for every bottle I sell I will donate a bottle to the guards. That way I can go home with my purse heavy and my cart light, and my wife will have nothing to complain about. Try it,” he insisted brightly to the guard who held the bottle. “I make it myself. I think you will find it is better than the piss others are passing for wine these days.”

The guard lifted the bottle to his lips and tilted his head back, drinking until the wine ran in two scarlet rivers down the sides of his mouth. Then he wiped his mouth on his filthy sleeve and passed the bottle to his friend.

“Well?” prodded Armand. “What do you think?”

“It’s good,” admitted the guard.

Armand nodded his head at the compliment. “I told you so.”

“So good I think we will need two bottles given to the guards for every one sold,” finished the guard.

Armand’s smile vanished. “But, good citizen, I cannot afford to give so much away,” he protested. “At that rate I will lose money.”

“Then raise the price of the bottles you sell to the prisoners.” The guard shrugged indifferently.

“The prisoners are not fools,” pointed out Armand. “They know the value of a bottle of wine. If I price it too high, they may not want it.”

“Then price it accordingly,” snapped the guard impatiently. “Or leave now and make no sales at all. It is up to you.”

Armand pretended to consider this for a moment, wringing together his hands in indecision. “Very well,” he said finally. “Two bottles to the guards for every one sold.”

“Good,” grunted the guard with satisfaction. “I will have to clear this with Citizen Benoît, the prison keeper. Give me your papers and wait here.”

Armand reached into his coat and produced the forged papers that identified him as Citizen Laurent, a Paris winemaker. The guard accepted them and disappeared through the huge doors, leaving Armand to wait outside in the cold. About fifteen minutes passed, during which Armand tried to keep a conversation going with the remaining guard. Just when he was thinking the other guard must be having trouble convincing the keeper to let him in, and that perhaps he would have to come up with an alternate plan, the guard returned wearing a satisfied smile.