1939912059 (R) (24 page)

So she maintained the association.

“When will he be released?” she finally asked.

Sade squeezed her hand. “This afternoon.”

Her lips trembled and she could no longer see past her tears. She hadn’t seen him since the night he left the theatre. Before his father had lost his mind and gave all of Paris a reason to curse the Andelot name. Her only consolation was that Gérard had not been butchered in that slaughter. He had been locked in a leather trunk at the foot of his father’s bed, bleeding from the head, barely conscious, when the
gendarmerie nationale
marched onto the Andelot estate in a hunt to find him and create a long list of charges that strangely kept getting changed.

Though she had repeatedly tried to see him during all sixteen of his trials that were reset, the locations of the courtrooms kept changing, as well as where he was being held. There were more than fifty-two prisons across all of Paris, all of them always full and all of them always changing names, making it impossible for her to find his name on any of the lists.

She couldn’t imagine what he had lived through.

A part of her felt responsible. After all, she had played along with his game of going against the Republic. All in the name of money and fame, both of which she now had, but both of which meant nothing without Gérard.

More tears slipped down her cheek.

Releasing her hand, Sade reached up and swiped her tear, dragging it against her skin. He glanced at it and dabbed his tongue to its wetness. “Who knew pain had so much flavor.”

She eyed him in exasperation. She had long ceased questioning Sade’s savage oddities. The moment she thought she understood the man, she did not. He was as charming as he was Satanic. But he had more than proven to be endearing enough for her to embrace him for what he really was: a seeker of pleasure and pain. He took pride in it and she had come to respect that. “Gérard will not be pleased when he learns of our association.”

He grudgingly stared her down. “Did I ever fuck you or whip you throughout any of this?”

She sniffed. “Cease with that language. You and I both know we are friends, but Gérard will never believe it. Or accept it. Especially given your last conversation with him and what you wanted of us.”

Sade didn’t meet her gaze. “This is how we must proceed if we are to save him. You will be given an hour to convince him to give me the papers, after which I will find someone I trust to get him out of Paris. I will wait until he is well out of reach before I get those papers into Robespierre’s hands. By then, no one will be able to touch him. In doing so, your association with Gérard must end. For the safety of your child and your life, if you stay in France, you cannot maintain any further contact or let anyone know you and he were ever involved. You have to let him go. Do you understand?”

Her throat tightened, and she no longer felt herself breathing. She was being forced to say good-bye to a beautiful dream that had never been hers. “No. An hour will not be enough. Is there any way to—”

He gripped her knee. Hard. “It would be too risky, and he requires a full night of darkness to get him out of Paris and as close to the border as possible.”

“What if I go with him? I want to go with him. I want to—”

“The more people who travel with him, the less likely he will make it. Do you want him to live or not?”

A sob escaped her knowing she would never see him again. All these months of being without him, without knowing what he was going through while their child had been growing within her, had brutalized her mind and soul to the point of mania. And now, with their child in her arms, she was being asked to stay in France and live through who knows how much longer without him.

She kept sobbing and sobbing and…sobbing.

“Woman, you are agitating me. If you keep crying, I will lay you on my lap naked and give you something to cry about.”

Swallowing back whatever tears she could choke back, she swiped at her eyes. “I will do anything to…save him. Tell me, and I will do it.”

“While I will do my best to convince him on my own, if I am unsuccessful, it will be up to you to get those papers into my hands. You have an hour to do it. I will fetch him from
La Force
upon his release this afternoon. We are incredibly blessed in that Robespierre has tasked me to watch over him and report his activities. Once Gérard has travelled outside of Paris all night, tomorrow at noon, I will deliver the papers to Robespierre and report his disappearance. At that point, I will not be able to protect him from whatever happens. Do you understand?”

A shaky breath escaped her as she kissed Henri’s head with trembling lips in an effort to remind herself that she couldn’t be selfish. She would always have Henri to remember him by. Always. A strange sense of regal calm overtook her knowing that the only way to save Gérard was to let him go. “I will ensure he gives you the papers.”

“Good. I will deliver him tonight at your château shortly after darkness falls. Leave the door to the servants’ quarters unlocked and dismiss all of your servants for the night using any means possible so no one sees you with him. Ensure he leaves no later than ten tonight. I will be waiting outside your château to take him to an unmarked coach that will carry him out of Paris to another unmarked coach that will take him to the border. Is that understood?”

She half-nodded, feeling numb. Her child would have no father. And she would have no husband. Ever. Not after Gérard. No eyes would ever be blue enough. No heart would ever be passionate enough. He had blinded her to all men. “Given I must let him go, I beseech you to prepare him for how things will end so what little time I have with him is not spent in argument. Can you do that?”

“Consider it done. Expect him shortly after nightfall. You will have an hour.”

One hour to end what she knew
no
amount of hours would ever end.

Although she wasn’t ready to say good-bye to her Gérard or what they had shared, she most certainly was ready to save his life and push him out into a world that needed him more than she did. He was only twenty-two. And his gallant nature and his gallant heart and all the good he would do for the world outside of France was only the beginning of what awaited the ever beautiful Gérard, the
Duc de Andelot
.

That afternoon

La Force, one of many crowded prisons throughout Paris

Although Gérard wanted to spit and curse and swing at the sky he could barely see beyond the rusting bars, he figured God needed a reprieve from his ever-growing long list of complaints. All that mattered was he was getting out.

The two dozen strangers crowded into his stone cell were the definition of the sort of panic every human went through when they realized death was near.

Women silently knelt with their ivory rosaries, their children huddled near, those faces covered with snot from hours of crying, while men, once they realized their shouts were of no use, eventually sat and carved their last messages into the walls with their own shoe buckles.

Gérard wished he could offer each and every one of them words of comfort, but what was the point of dangling any emotion for them or the world to see? It couldn’t smash stone walls or end a revolution.

After everything he had endured and seen with his own two eyes, there was no more room for emotion in France. Many buildings throughout Paris, which he had been repeatedly forced to see from the open cart on his way to and from countless prisons, were always burning. The heat from the rising flames that cracked toward the open skies made the sooty air appear as if everything were melting from rippling intensity. It had penetrated his pulsing skin in the same way the blurring faces and shouts of the bourgeois and lowers classes had penetrated his mind.

And they thought he was the animal.

Going to and from trials and cart to cart and prison to prison for months at a time, witnessing death on the streets of Paris had become the norm. Barely a week earlier, his open, mud-spattered cart had clattered past the corpse of an old neighbor, Vicomte de Laroche, an elderly titled man with four grandchildren he always boasted to the world about. The elderly man always had a smile for his fellow French and was often seen tossing coins to impoverished children.

Vicomte de Laroche had lain mangled, the blood from his slit-open throat caked and sprayed across cobbled streets. Those open eyes had stared up to the heavens as flies crawled across his expressionless face and mouth.

Gérard had almost fallen out of the cart as he rolled by that unmoving elderly body. He had watched as several young men in red wool caps stripped Laroche of his expensive clothing and casually donned it as if they had just gone shopping in the finest district.

It was something Gérard would remember for the rest of his life.

He swore onto the memory of elderly Laroche, that the moment he left the walls of this prison, he would ensure everyone in Laroche’s family made it out of France alive.

Well-exhausted from standing within the overly crowded holding chamber, where he awaited his release, Gérard seated himself back on the dirt-pounded floor beside a young girl of about fourteen. She arranged her mud-spattered gown around her slippered feet.

She had been shoved into the cell less than an hour earlier without anyone.

What a fourteen-year-old girl was doing in prison at all was beyond his understanding.

Surprisingly, she appeared to be taking it well. A bit
too
well. Earlier, she had been humming a ditty as if she were waiting for a friend at a coffeehouse.

Lowering his gaze, he dug his fingers into the frayed wool of his breeches in an effort to remain calm knowing there was nothing he could do to help her or anyone else in this prison.

Several roaches with dangling antennas crawled out from beneath the cracks of the stone wall beside him. They paused in stealth unison.

The girl beside him frantically removed her slipper from her right foot and turned, raising the slipper above her head, waiting for their approach. When the roaches ticked in a group in the opposite direction (for they must have known she was anything but receptive to a visit), she shoved her stockinged foot back into her mud-slathered satin shoe and leaned her head back against the hard stone wall.

Gérard shifted his jaw and wanted to point out to the girl that it was ridiculous to worry about roaches given what awaited her. But seeing it could very well be her last hours of her life, it didn’t seem fair to say anything but, “Well done. I doubt they will ever come back.”

She set her chin in pride and seated herself beside him. She then eyed him and said in broken French, “Do…they…” She scooped fingers toward her mouth to indicate what she was trying to say.

Christ. She didn’t even speak French. This fucking war was being waged against everyone. He angled toward her, his brows coming together. He spoke slowly in French, “What…
language
do you…
speak
?”

She paused and eventually managed, “
Anglais
.”

Astounded, he sat up and quickly offered in English, “What are you doing in this prison?”

Her mouth opened and closed in astonishment. Her green eyes brightened. “Heavens, above! You speak English. And quite beautifully, might I add! How do you do?” She shook his hand, then hugged him and froze, her nose wrinkling. She released him and edged away. “The French certainly do stink.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Are you in here for long?” she asked.

“No. Not much longer.”

Her slim brows came together and flickered. “You cannot leave me! While this has been quite the adventure I plan to put into poetry, no one here speaks any English. And my French is not what it should be. You have to help me. They barely understand anything I say.”

His chest tightened. “Where are your parents?”

She jabbed a finger toward the wall. “Back at the house too many streets away. We have not been able to leave France since the revolution broke out. We were visiting Mama’s family at the time, and Papa decided it was best we all stay and chronicle what was happening. Only far more happened than he had ever bargained for. Mama slaps his arm about it every day given they closed the borders and…here we are. We get along rather well with everyone, seeing we have more than enough money to share with whoever needs it, but I was outside this morning and these…two soldiers with red caps were shooting their pistols at a dog and laughing about it. So I…threw a rock at them and…” She grudgingly huffed out a breath. “My French is not what it should be. But I do know one thing. I am set for trial.” She paused. “I will get a lawyer, yes?”

Fuck. What the girl didn’t know was the Revolutionary Tribunal had long done away with trials. He had actually been one of the last to have seen such ‘justice’. The Tribunal was now sending everyone straight to the guillotine. No matter the charges. Less paperwork. “Do you know the address of your parents?”

She rubbed at her nose. “Nineteen Soubise.” She hesitated. “You seem very kind.” She smiled. “What is your name?”