The Misguided Matchmaker (12 page)

She
frowned. “Don’t tell me. I already know. Your stupid masculine pride. I have to
wonder what
le bon Dieu
had in mind when he made men the rulers of the
world. They are such a silly, prideful lot.”

In
a matter of minutes Maddy had reduced the affliction that had haunted him since
childhood to something she “didn’t believe was terribly uncommon.” One would
think he’d confessed to having a hangnail, not a case of abject cowardice. But
devil take it, this slip of a girl’s calm acceptance of his debilitating
weakness was almost as embarrassing as the weakness itself.

Shifting
uncomfortably from one foot to the other, he watched her brush away the water
that had dripped onto her forehead from the beam supporting the opening of the
cadole.
“Well at least get the carriage blanket and cover your head,” she said
crossly. “I’ve no desire to be nursing you through a head cold for the balance
of our trip.”

Damn
her eyes! First she’d made him out a fool; now she wanted to reduce him to some
missish creature huddling beneath a blanket for fear of taking a chill. “I do
not catch colds,” he said stiffly. “I am impervious to such things. I have
never been sick a day in my life.”

Drawing
the hood of his cassock over his head, he hunkered down on the side of the
cadole
protected from the wind and prepared to wait out the storm.

“Do
you remember what happened when you were a child to put this fear of
confinement in your head?” Maddy asked, poking her head out of the hut when the
wind died down sufficiently so they could carry on a conversation.

Tristan
pulled the hood further over his face. Of course he remembered. But that was
one memory he had never divulged to anyone—not even his siblings.

“Sometimes
putting such things into words is the first step toward conquering them,” she
said offhandedly, as if she had no idea she was asking him to bare the blackest
secret of his soul.

Was
she right? Would exposing his fears to the light take away the power they still
held over him? He doubted it, but he knew from experience Maddy would wring the
humiliating truth out of him sooner or later.

“My
mother was a whore in one of the most notorious brothels in the London slums,”
he said finally, and heard Maddy gasp.
Let the nosy little busybody digest
that bit of information if she could.
“The abbess let her keep me with her,
but only if I didn’t interfere with her professional duties. Hence, whenever
she had a customer, which was nearly every night, she locked me in the clothes
press. It was very dark and cramped and I was a mere tadpole with more imagination
than sense. I used to stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming in
terror.”

Maddy
crawled from the hut to sit beside him in the rain, her eyes wide with horror.
“But how could she do such a thing, knowing it frightened you so?”

“She
didn’t know,” he said simply. “Why would I tell her? Even a six-year-old could
see she had no other option.”

Maddy
felt as if her heart had been rent asunder. In her mind’s eye she pictured
Tristan as he must have been then—a little black-haired waif cowering, terrified,
in his dark hidey-hole while his mother sold her body as a ten-penny whore.

He
avoided her eyes, staring straight ahead to where, on the far horizon, the sun
was breaking through the clouds. “As it turned out,” he said softly, “the
driver of a hackney coach solved my problem with the clothes press. He ran her
down on a day much like this one. Though, in all fairness, with the rain and
wind buffeting him, I doubt he ever knew she was beneath his wheels. She was
such a little thing he could easily have mistaken her for a pile of rags
someone had tossed into the middle of Haymarket Street.”

“Oh,
Tristan, what a terrible experience for a young boy to suffer.” Maddy slipped
her hand into his. “And that’s when the Countess of Rand took you in.”

“Yes.”
He looked at her then—an odd, crooked smile twisting his lips. “The abbess knew
who my father was, you see, and had one of her bully boys deliver me to the
earl’s townhouse. He disclaimed me, of course, but the countess clasped me to
her bosom, kissed away my tears, and made me as welcome as if I’d been one of
her own. From that day forward, I was Lord Tristan, with nothing to remind me
of my former life or my poor little mother except this blasted cowardly
affliction which I’ll probably carry to my grave.”

Maddy
gave his fingers a squeeze. “Don’t ever call yourself cowardly again. I think
you are the bravest person I’ve ever known. When I think of the torture you
must have suffered in those dreadful, dark
traboules
, I could simply
cry.” And leaning her head against his shoulder, she proceeded to do just that.

Tristan
shook his head in dismay. He’d been wrong in supposing he’d earn Maddy’s
disgust with his sordid tale. It appeared to make no difference whatsoever in
her regard for him. If anything, her eyes held more stars than ever once she
dried her tears—stars that spelled trouble ahead, unless he could dissuade her
from this idiotic notion that he was some kind of tragic hero.

He
was wrong about something else also. He was not immune to head colds. For the next
two days and nights he alternated between burning with fever and shivering with
ague. Maddy never actually said, “I told you so,” but it was there in her eyes
each time she looked at him.

Once
she even went so far as to suggest he should spend a few days in bed at a small
posting in where they spent a night, but that only made him more determined
than ever to push on toward Paris. By the time they entered the city late on
the evening of March 19, he felt weak as a kitten. Furthermore, he’d developed a
persistent hacking cough and a set of aching muscles that made sitting a horse
a constant agony.

Paris
seemed strangely quiet—much too quiet to his way of thinking. One could
scarcely credit that Napoleon and his legions were marching triumphantly toward
the city—or that there was every likelihood that Parisians might go to bed this
night under the king’s rule and wake up tomorrow morning to find the emperor
back on his throne.

“We
must make our way to the Tuileries,” Tristan said between coughing bouts. “Castlereagh
will want a firsthand report on the fate of King Louis, and I may be the only
one who can give it to him.”

Remembering
her grandfather’s fanatic allegiance to the Bourbons, Maddy nodded her
agreement, though more than anything else, she longed for a hot meal and a soft
bed.

A
crowd had gathered outside the gates of the royal palace. Tristan and Maddy
dismounted and, keeping a tight rein on their horses, joined the people on the
outskirts. “What is happening?” Tristan asked a grizzled old man leaning on a
stout walking stick.

The
fellow regarded Tristan through hooded eyes. “Nothing that should greatly
concern you and the lad, Father. It is rumored the Little Corporal sleeps at
Fontainebleau tonight, so Fat Louis flees to Ghent.” He shrugged his narrow
shoulders. “But it matters little who sits on the throne of France. Life will
be no better or worse for the ordinary Frenchman.”

He
raised his head and peered toward the gate. “Ah, here is the king now,” he said
doffing his narrow-billed cap.

As
Maddy watched, two liveried footmen emerged, carrying an oversized chair in
which sat a grossly obese man with thinning gray hair and a collection of chins
which rested like great, white pudding bags on his purple satin waistcoat.

She
stared at him in disbelief. “Never tell me that overstuffed toad is the king
for whom my grandfather was willing to lay down his life?” she whispered to
Tristan.

“That
is the king,” he said, stifling a cough.

A
halfhearted cheer went up from the crowd and the perspiring footmen halted for
a moment while the occupant of the chair raised a hand in greeting.

“My
beloved countrymen,” he said in a surprisingly strong mellifluous voice, “I
fear nothing for myself, but I fear for France. He who comes among us to light
the torch of civil war brings us also the plague of foreign war. He comes to
place our country once more under his iron yoke. He comes to destroy this
constitutional charter I have given you.”

A
smattering of applause rippled throughout the crowd and one young soldier in a
tattered Royalist uniform cried,
“Vive le roi!”

The
king mopped his brow with a lace-edged handkerchief and continued, “This is the
charter which all Frenchmen cherish—may it be our sacred standard!”

Another
cheer from the crowd, this time slightly more enthusiastic. Then, with the
combined effort of half a dozen of his stalwart young guardsmen, Louis XVIII
was hoisted aloft and stuffed into his ornate traveling-coach. The last Maddy
saw of him was a pudgy, ring-bedecked hand waving out the window as the carriage
rumbled northward toward the Belgian border.

Her
eyes prickled with tears. “I thank
le bon Dieu
my grandfather was not
here to see his ridiculous travesty of a king fleeing before the Corsican,” she
said sadly. She looked about her. “At least he had some loyal supporters to
cheer him as he left.”

“Who
will cheer Bonaparte with equal gusto when he enters the city tomorrow,”
Tristan said dryly. “The old man speaks for most Parisians. They are sick to
death of strife and will settle for anyone who brings them peace. But that is
not our problem.”

He
surveyed the crowd, which was scattering in all directions. “So far I have seen
no familiar faces, but my luck can only hold so long. More than anything else,
we need to leave Paris before someone recognizes me.”

Mounting
his horse, he made a careful survey of the broad avenue flanking the Tuileries.
“But first we must find oats for the horses, as well as food for ourselves and
beds on which to lay our heads for a few hours. We will make a dash for Calais
at first light.”

Wearily,
Maddy mounted the little mare and followed him through the darkened streets of
Paris. Once they’d passed the partially constructed Arc de Triomphe, which
Napoleon had designed to celebrate his early military victories, the streets
narrowed and the elegant buildings gave way to a rabbit warren of tenements and
tiny, windowless shops.

The
wind was rising sharply and the fetid air hanging over the city was soon thick
with the dirt and debris that littered the ancient streets. Holding the reins
with one hand and shielding her eyes from the flying grit with the other, Maddy
struggled to keep up with Tristan as he urged his stallion down one narrow,
twisting alleyway after another.

Twice
he doubled back, passing through the same street they had traversed just
moments before. But finally, just when she was certain he was hopelessly lost,
he stopped before a recessed doorway at the end of a cobblestone street.

“My
former abode,” he explained in the gravelly voice he’d acquired with his head
cold. He pounded on the door. “The landlady is an old friend who can be counted
on for a decent meal and a clean bed.”

He
pounded again, and the door opened a crack, then was thrown wide by a small,
dark-haired figure in a white nightrail. “Treeston,
mon ami
,” she
shrieked, winding her plump arms about his neck. “What are you, of all men,
doing in the garb of a priest?”

Tristan
chuckled, which started him coughing again. “It is a long story, Minette, and
one better told over a glass of wine and a plate of your excellent food.” He
handed the reins of both horses to a ragged urchin lounging beside the open
doorway and instructed him to lead them to the mews, then drew Maddy forward.
“Can you put my young friend and me up for the night? We will want adjoining
rooms with a connecting door.”

Minette
raised an expressive eyebrow as she stepped aside to let Tristan and Maddy
enter. “So,
cheri,
you have not warmed my bed for ten months and now you
wish such an arrangement with this…this creature!” She glared at Maddy.

Tristan
glanced Maddy’s way, as if to gauge her reaction to the risqué question, but by
sheer force of will she managed to hide the shock she felt at the woman’s
frankness.

Furtively,
she studied this “old friend” of his, who was apparently also an old lover.
Even in the dim candlelight she could see the fine lines edging the woman’s
black, snapping eyes, which proclaimed her past the first blush of youth.
Still, one could not deny her dark, sultry beauty, and her thin nightrail did
little to hide her full breasts and rounded hips, two womanly attributes Maddy
had always secretly envied in women more voluptuous than she.

Minette’s
lower lip protruded in a pout. “I have missed you, Treeston. It is my curse in
life that my heart should never stop longing for such a cruel, uncaring man.”
She cast another venomous glance at Maddy. “And now, you insult me thus.”

“I
have missed you too,
cheri
,” Tristan said, dropping a chaste kiss on the
brow of the woman who had been his lover off and on for almost seven years.

He
found himself strangely embarrassed by Minette’s overt allusion to their former
relationship. Her frankness had never bothered him before. In fact, there had
been a time when he’d considered it amusing. But now that he was forced to view
the situation through Maddy’s eyes… Still, giving the little innocent a glimpse
of his former life might be the best way to disillusion her about him.