The Misguided Matchmaker (5 page)

“There
is the answer then.”
Père
Bertrand positively beamed. “God works in
mysterious ways. Madeleine will leave St. Bartholomew’s by the same door
through which her grandparents sought sanctuary during the Terror.”

With
Madelaine’s help, the priest hoisted his considerable bulk from the chair on
which he’d sat while Forli cut her hair. “Follow me,” he said, and led them to
a small room at the back of the church which housed the robes and vestments
used by the St. Bartholomew clergy. In the center of one wall stood a massive
oak door framed by a stone archway. The housekeeper turned the iron key in the
lock and opened the door.

Tristan
took a deep breath, strapped the knapsack to his back, and stepped through the
opening. Raising his lantern, he found himself in a narrow, covered walkway
walled in by huge, square stone blocks. A draft of damp, chilly air brushed his
face, and the faint, sour smell of mold filled his nostrils.

A
shiver crawled up his spine. He had always had an irrational dread of enclosed
areas, and though he knew full well how he came by it, no amount of reasoning
with himself had managed to dispel it. These ancient passageways might be the
only safe route out of Lyon, but traversing them would be a living hell. He
hoped to God he didn’t disgrace himself in the process. Even now he could feel
his palms beginning to sweat and his knees tremble.

Behind
him, the good cleric removed his own ornate chain and cross and slipped it over
Madelaine’s head. “I doubt we shall meet again in this earthly life,
granddaughter of my heart,” he said gently, “but I shall pray for you always.
God bless you and keep you, dear child.”

Eyes
glistening with unshed tears, Madelaine hugged her old friend, then stepped
past the tall Englishman into the
traboule
that had played such an
important part in her family’s history.

Holding
her lantern before her, she led her two traveling companions down what seemed
an interminable dark corridor and finally up a flight of stone stairs into a
wide alleyway. Here the covered sections were separated by long stretches open
to the moonlit sky, and the half wall was topped by a grillwork which cast
eerie shadows over the walkway.

She
watched Tristan Thibault lean against the grillwork and stare up at the open
sky. He was breathing heavily and beads of perspiration dotted his forehead.
Even in the sparse light of the lantern she could see he was deathly pale.

“Are
you ill, monsieur?” she asked, anxiously searching his face. Thibault’s
muttered answer sounded suspiciously like a curse and he gave her a look so
coldly angry, she felt the blood freeze in her veins. Acutely embarrassed, she
quickly turned away.
Grandpère
had always claimed Englishman were a
nasty-tempered lot; Monsieur Thibault proved the story true.

“Stay
close to me,” she warned. “Many
traboules
converge near here. You could
become lost if we are separated.”

Tristan
Thibault instantly moved forward to walk close behind her. Too close. The heat
from his body warmed her back, and every inch of her skin tingled with the awareness
of his presence. She found the sensation decidedly unnerving.

It
was not as if she were a green girl unaccustomed to men. She had been flattered
and courted by every young Royalist in Lyon who hoped to ingratiate himself
with her grandfather. They were French; they were charming; they were romantic;
one in particular was as handsome as any hero of any novel she’d ever read—but
not one of them had made her skin tingle.

How
could she have such a disturbing reaction to a man who snarled at her if she asked
a simple question—a man who, in the best of moods, resembled a bear with a
thorn in its
paw.
It simply was not logical…unless she
was so weakened by grief and exhaustion she was no longer capable of reacting
in a rational manner. Of course, that must be the explanation. Her grandfather
had been ill for so long, she couldn’t even remember when she’d last had the
luxury of a full night’s sleep.

She
was still pondering her dilemma when she realized they’d arrived at the spot
she’d been dreading—an open courtyard onto which six separate arched
passageways converged. She had not been entirely honest when she’d claimed she
knew her way around the
traboules
. It had been years since she’d walked
them with her grandfather, and the memory was vague, to say the least. But the
alternative—hiding in the church, trapped and helpless—had been unthinkable.

Frantically,
she surveyed the six identical arches, aware she hadn’t a clue which one led to
La Croix Rousse. One wrong turn and they could be lost for hours or, worse yet,
end up in one of the notorious
traboules
mystérieuses
, where it
was rumored the Black Mass was regularly celebrated. Then she
would
be
in trouble—in the company of a “priest” whom Monsieur Forli had rightly claimed
looked like a reincarnation of
le diable
himself.

“I
must get my bearings,” she said, halting so suddenly Tristan Thibault plowed
into her and Forli into him.

“Damnation!”
he hissed, catching her around the waist as the collision sent her tumbling
forward. He released her immediately, but not before she felt the incredible
strength in his arms and in his lean, hard body.

There
it was again. That tingling sensation. She shuddered, aware how foolish she’d
been to put her life in the hands of this powerful stranger simply because he
purported to represent her English father—and equally aware it was too late to
worry about it now. Good or bad, she’d been dealt a hand; she had no choice but
to play it out. Crossing her fingers for luck she made a quick decision and
headed for the third arch on her right.

Forli
followed her into the dark passageway and reluctantly Tristan brought up the
rear, praying it would lead to another of those open areas before his
traitorous nerves betrayed him. With grim determination, he forced himself to
put one foot before the other and concentrate on what she was saying.

“The
rear entrances of the apartments of Lyon’s wealthiest citizens open onto these
traboules
.
When I find the door to the one that once belonged to my grandfather, I shall
know we are in the alleyway that eventually leads to La Croix Rousse.”

Tristan
raised his lantern and stared at the series of identical doors lining the walls
of the alleyway. “How can you tell one from another?” he asked. “They all look
alike to me.”

“The
door I seek carries a double coat of arms, that of the Medicis, who first built
the apartment when they came to Lyon in the fifteenth century, and”—her voice
carried unmistakable pride—”that of the noble family of Navareil, the owners
for the past three hundred years.” She paused. “Now, of course, it is inhabited
by the Prefect of Lyon, a Bonapartist who was a pig farmer before the
Revolution.”

Tristan
heard the note of disdain in her voice and for the first time began to
understand Caleb Harcourt’s obsession with marrying his daughter to a member of
the English nobility. Like her mother, Madelaine Harcourt would be satisfied
with nothing less. From the connotation she gave the term “pig farmer,” it was
obvious she felt nothing but contempt for the lower classes.

He
smiled to himself. How it must gall this descendant of the French nobility to
have to impersonate a member of the peasant class…and wouldn’t her blue blood
freeze in her veins if she knew the man who would be her constant companion for
the next fortnight was the son of a Rookeries prostitute.

Poor
Garth! Spending the rest of his life leg-shackled to this French social climber
was a high price to pay for the blunt to save his title and estates. For the
first time, it occurred to Tristan there were certain advantages to being the
old earl’s by-blow.

It
also occurred to him that he derived an inordinate degree of satisfaction from
finding fault with his future sister-in-law.

It
did not, at the moment, occur to him to wonder why.

N
o more than five minutes down the
chosen passageway, Madelaine began to have serious doubts that it was the one
leading past her grandfather’s former apartment. For one thing the doors looked
too small and too close together to be the apartments of the rich. For another,
the further they progressed, the shabbier and more disreputable the area
looked. Finally they reached a spot where foul-smelling debris littered the
walkway and charcoal scribbles, many of them embarrassingly obscene, littered
the walls.

She
raised her hand to signal a halt. “I am afraid I have taken a wrong turn,” she
admitted apologetically. “We shall have to retrace our steps.” Absolute silence
greeted her admission. She waited, expecting a show of frustration, even anger
from her two companions. Instead, Tristan Thibault stood motionless, his head
raised like a hound taking scent, while Forli studied him with anxious eyes.

“There
are people ahead of us,” Thibault said. “I cannot tell how many. They are still
a long way off, but they are moving swiftly and in our direction.”

Madelaine
held her breath, listening. “Are you certain? I hear nothing.”

“Believe
him,” Forli said. “I can tell you from experience milord has the hearing and
the instincts of…a fox.”

“We
cannot afford a confrontation.” Thibault’s expression was grim. “We need a
place to hide and so far we haven’t passed so much as an indentation in the
wall.” He handed his lantern to Forli and reached for the one Madelaine held
aloft. “Our only hope is to make it back to the central courtyard in time to
slip into one of the other passageways.” So saying, he transferred the lantern
to his left hand and grasping Madelaine’s hand in his right, took off on a run.

Madelaine’s
legs were long, the Englishman’s longer, and he had a death grip on her
nerveless fingers. Desperately, she plowed down the narrow
traboule
after him in her clumsy peasant’s boots, praying he wouldn’t pull her off her
feet. By the time they reached the courtyard, her heart was pounding and her
lungs crying for air. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dove through the
closest archway and sprinted down the dark passageway just far enough to be out
of sight of anyone in the courtyard.

“Give
me your jacket so I can cover the lantern,” he demanded. Madelaine slipped the
canvas jacket from her shoulders and handed it to him. Instantly, they were
plunged into darkness and her heart leapt into her throat. Normally she had no
fear of the dark, but the combination of the ancient
traboules
and this
mysterious stranger set her nerves on edge.

“Wouldn’t
we be safer farther down the passageway?” she asked when she caught her breath.

“Possibly
so, but I prefer to stay here.”

Madelaine’s
eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see his gaze was riveted on the
moonlit courtyard through which they’d just passed as if his very life depended
on keeping it in view—a useless precaution to her way of thinking. She tried
again. “Are we not too close to the courtyard to escape unnoticed if whoever
was behind us chooses to travel this
traboule
?”

“If
you have any influence in high places, pray they don’t.”

Madelaine
sniffed. “If I had such influence, monsieur, I would not be cowering here in
the dark.”

“Cowering?
You, mademoiselle?” He gave a derisive snort. “I would pit you against a cage
of hungry lions and wager my last shilling on the outcome—and my money would
not be on the lions.”

“Am
I to take that as a compliment?”

His
gaze remained steadfastly fixed on the courtyard. “You may take it any way you
wish.”

Madelaine
chose to ignore it. She changed the subject rather than show she cared in the
least what he thought of her. Anxiously, she made her own study of the
courtyard. “I see no sign of Monsieur Forli’s lantern. I fear we have lost
him.”

“Don’t
worry about Forli. He can take care of himself.”

Madelaine
shivered, filled with alarm for the odd little Italian who had befriended them,
and certain this callous
Anglais
would show the same lack of compassion
if she had been the one to fall behind during their mad dash. He struck her as
a man complete unto himself—needing no one, caring for no one. She found
herself wondering if it was this cold aloofness that had made Monsieur Forli
label him “The Fox.”

The
object of her ruminations gripped her upper arm with fingers of steel,
startling her to instant attention. “What in holy hell is that?” he asked in a
hoarse whisper.

She
looked up to find a host of black-hooded figures, each carrying a candle,
filing into the courtyard. At that same moment, the moon disappeared behind a
cloud, leaving only the pinpoints of candlelight to outline the unearthly
procession.

In
silent orderly formation, the ten or more shadowy apparitions circled the open
area. Then, as if defying the moon’s rejection of their diabolic order, one of
them began to chant in some ancient guttural language, the likes of which
Madelaine had never before heard. One by one, the others joined in an unholy
harmony that sent chills skittering down her back.

“
Nom de Dieu
!”
she
gasped.
“The rumors of the
Black Mass are true.”

“The
Black Mass?” Tristan Thibault swore softly in gutter French. “Just what we need
to make this fascinating evening complete.”

For
the first time since he’d barged into her life, Madelaine found herself in
complete accord with her irascible traveling companion. Crossing herself, she
held her breath until she saw the last of the sinister-looking figures
disappear through an archway on the opposite side of the courtyard from where
the two of them were hidden.

Not
a muscle in the Englishman’s big body moved, but his grip on her arm tightened
noticeably and his breathing sounded heavy and labored. She felt a brief moment
of triumph. So, this seemingly imperturbable Englishman did know the meaning of
fear after all.

Moments
later, the moon broke through the clouds to once again flood the courtyard with
silvery light. The Englishman relaxed his punishing grip, uncovered the
lantern, and held it aloft, his eyes still riveted on the open courtyard as if
the patch of moonlit sky drew him like a magnet.

“Well
that’s that,” he said in a voice devoid of expression. “What now, lady guide?
Have you any idea where we are?”

Taking
her cue from him, Madelaine pulled herself together and gazed about her,
determined to hide the fear that still threatened to buckle her knees. “It is
hard to tell from the light of a single lantern, but there is something about
this passageway that looks familiar,” she answered in the same flat tone in
which he had posed his question.

“Good.
The sooner we find our way out of here, the better. But if you have any doubts,
for God’s sake, express them now. One wild goose-chase through these curst
traboules
is more than enough.”

Madelaine
stiffened. “I shall do my best to keep from inconveniencing you further,
monsieur.” Crossing her fingers once again, she moved ahead of him down the
passage. This one was wider and cleaner than the one they had previously
traversed, and the doors lining it were more ornate and spaced further apart.

With
a sigh of relief, she spotted an alcove containing an ancient stone well and
beyond it a narrow passage branching off the main one. If memory served her,
the apartment that had been her grandfather’s lay but a few feet beyond this
intersection.

“Here
is the door I seek,” she said, stopping to run her fingers over the two coats
of arms. Just so, she had traced these carved emblems on her fourteenth
birthday when her grandfather first brought her to this spot to hear the
history of the noble family from which she’d sprung.

She
remembered well the bitterness in his voice when he’d explained. “I dare not
take you to the front entrance,
ma petite fille
; we must stand here like
fishmongers at the tradesman’s door, while a peasant occupies what has belonged
to the Navareils for centuries.” Even now, years later, she felt choked with
sorrow for the old man who had wasted a lifetime grieving for the wealth and
privilege that had once been his.

With
one last look at her family’s coat of arms, she closed the door on her noble
past and opened another on the unknown future to which this stern-faced
Englishman was taking her. It occurred to her that he had been amazingly
patient with her, considering the perversity of his nature. First he’d helped
her give her grandfather a proper burial at great danger to himself; now he
waited in this dark
traboule
while she bid her sad good-bye to her life
in Lyon. Perhaps he was not so lacking in compassion as he appeared.

“I
am finished now,” she said, a tiny portion of her heart warming toward this
enigmatic stranger her father had appointed as her protector. “I promise I will
detain you no longer.”

“And
I promise I will remind you of that promise if you do.” His biting sarcasm made
it all too apparent he was neither patient nor compassionate, but merely bent
on completing the onerous task her father had assigned him with the least
possible trouble. For some reason she could not fathom, this surly Englishman’s
disapproval cut her to the quick. She found herself wondering what the going
price was these days for delivering long-lost daughters to wealthy London
merchants.

“How
much farther must we go?” he asked in an oddly breathless voice a few moments
later.

“I
am not certain, monsieur. It has been a long time since I last visited the
traboules
.”

“If
you could bring yourself to walk a little faster, I would appreciate it,” he
said through gritted teeth.

“Faster,
monsieur?” Startled by the intensity in his voice, Madelaine glanced behind
her. He had that look again—the black one that made him appear positively
demonic—and his fists were tightly clenched as if he were exerting every ounce
of control he possessed to keep from doing her bodily harm.

“Faster,
mademoiselle. I would like to retrieve Forli’s horse and carriage before it
goes the same way as my horse.”

So
that was what was bothering him. Because of her, his valuable horse had been
stolen, and the loss to his pocketbook infuriated him. “Never fear, monsieur,”
she said scathingly, “I will make certain my father reimburses you for your
loss.”

“Loss?
What loss?” he muttered, mopping his streaming brow.

She
stared at him in amazement. Was the man mad? Or was he running a fever that
addled his brain? Why else would he be bathed in perspiration when the cold
dampness of the
traboules
chilled her to the bone?

With
the grim-faced Englishman on her heels, she forced herself to sprint the
remaining quarter of a mile to the entrance of La Croix Rousse. “Here we are,”
she said breathlessly. “We have only to cross through this district and we will
reach the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers where Monsieur Forli said
his horse and carriage were hidden.”

“Thank
God,” Tristan Thibault murmured, staring at the sky above him with a rapt
expression in his strange, pale eyes. Here the walls of the buildings bordering
the narrow alley were two stories high, but the passageway itself was
uncovered. He leaned against the nearby wall, taking in great, gulping breaths
of air, as if their short sprint had left his lungs totally depleted. For a man
who appeared so strong, he was certainly in terrible condition.

Madelaine
pressed her finger to her lips, cautioning him to silence. Once again she
covered the lantern with her jacket, but this time the waning moon and the
light pouring from the many open doors lining the alleyway dispelled the
darkness. She took a deep breath. The air was heavy with the waxy smoke of
dozens of guttering candles and an odd, musty smell she remembered her
grandfather telling her emanated from the bolts of fabric waiting to be
delivered to the shops of the silk merchants for which Lyon was famous.

Tristan
Thibault touched her shoulder. “That noise? What is it?” he whispered.

Madelaine
listened to the familiar click, clack, bang…click,
clack
,
bang. “The
canuts
—silk weavers—at work,” she whispered back. “Every
household in the district has its own
bistanclaque
. The family members
take turns weaving and sleeping in the lofts above so the looms are never
silent.

She
frowned. “Weaving is hot work. The doors of the
canuts
’ apartments are
rarely closed. We will have to pass dozens of open doorways to reach our
destination. I pray we can do so without being seen.”

“I
take it these
canuts
are Bonapartists.”

“To
a man, though apparently not even the return of the emperor can lure them from
their
bistanclaques
. Still, it is well known they hate the old
aristocracy and anyone connected with it. They would turn us over to the
gronards
without a qualm if they suspected our true identities—or mine, anyway—and I
cannot think how we would explain a priest and his acolyte wandering the
traboules
in the dead of night. We will not be safe until we put La Croix Rousse behind
us.”