French Passion (41 page)

Shutters clattered ahead of me. A small elderly merchant flung open his shop door. “Come, Citizeness, let me show my antiquities. No obligation.” His wink was too lewd for so old a man.

Piled in his window were ivory chessmen. The lovingly carved little figures reminded me, too forcibly, of the Comte's miniature collection. Tears blinded me. Quickly I crossed to the Palais Royale gardens.

A newsboy started shouting, “Égalité! Read Égalité's words on the massacres!”

At André's name, a harsh, hot serum filled my body. A crowd gathered around the boy, and I elbowed and shouldered my way through, tearing a paper from his hands.

It was one of those Open Letters that the writer pays to have printed. Fresh ink smeared the yellow sheet. André, I thought, André. The love, which never had died, rose up in its full force, and my hand shook so I couldn't read. I sat on a bench, holding the paper flat on the wood.

A DENUNCIATION OF THE SEPTEMBER MASSACRES

I was filled with hope and joy on the day feudal abuse ended, and the age of liberty and equality dawned. My joy, alas, has been shortlived … The most vicious political clubs now rule.… All around I see murder and the shedding of innocent blood. I see France divided into two groups. The vast number of decent, moderate people, and a small number of radical clubs who, for their own fell purpose of gaining power, terrorize our Republic
.

Citizens, we must raise our voices against these bloodstained factions, now, before it is too late. The reign of kings has ended. Join me in speaking up before all decent people fall into an endless reign of terror
.

I held the paper to my breasts, not caring that ink would smudge the delicate gauze tucked in the low bust-line of my white muslin frock.

André's Open Letter roused in me such a wild conflict of emotions that I could scarcely sort them out. The old love was yet more strong, and admiration, too, of his honor and decency. I grieved at having lost him. I yearned to see him.

Two things stood to the fore. First, his words, a battle cry, frightened me. For the moderates no longer ruled, and though André was a delegate in the Assembly, surely writing this—I stared at the yellow paper—would draw danger from the murderers he denounced.

Second, I felt a fierce joy that the moderates
were
weak and powerless. My going to André wouldn't damage his reputation. And as for sending me to prison on a trumped-up charge? He wouldn't, I decided, reasoning that by now his hurt anger must have been blunted.

“So here you are!” Izette snapped. “And me waiting at the Café de Foy!”

Wordless, I handed her the paper. She held it close to her face, her mouth moving silently as she read.

Around us clustered people talking in low, excited tones about Égalité's bravery. While Izette read the Open Letter, I came to a decision. The lethargy of mourning was gone. My still-raw grief I pushed into a closed-off part of my brain. The Comte's last wish was that I not see André. I ignored this—indeed forgot his veiled hints at the dangerous mystery surrounding André. With piercing regret, I saw only that I had wasted the few brief years when my husband and I could have shared happiness.

“Mustn't make the same mistake over,” I murmured aloud, resting back against the wooden park bench. “Must go to André.”

Having already concluded that André wouldn't carry out his early threats to imprison me, I didn't worry about danger. But my marriage to the Comte had wounded André deeply. He certainly would insult me, possibly spurn me. He might reject me entirely. That was a chance I had to take. Pride had no place here. I must go to him. The past bloodstained weeks had taught me one simple fact: each and every moment of life is unique, precious, not to be wasted.

Izette had finished reading. Neatly she folded the paper, handing it to me.

“Well?” I demanded.

“It ain't the safest thing anyone could write,” she said. “He all but denounces the Jacobin Club for the massacres.”

“I'm going to him.”

She gaped in surprise. “You're what?”

“Going to André.”

“Manon, after this”—she regained the Open Letter, tapped it crisply on the bench—“he's got every Jacobin, including Goujon and Robespierre, after him.”

“André's a delegate to the Assembly. They can't harm him.”

“After last week, ain't you realized that nobody's safe, not here?”

“All the more reason, then. Who knows how much time we have.”

She glanced around, making sure nobody was near. “Go back to England,” she whispered. “You're a worse case than most. An émigré, and the Comtesse de Créqui to boot.”

“Izette, I love him.” My voice shook. “It's not reasonable, going to him, so don't make me justify myself.”

The annoyance faded from her expression, and her voice, when she spoke, was filled with choking affection. “Well, when was you ever one to listen to reason? If you'd of listened, you wouldn't of taken in a half-froze streetwalker. Or kept a crippled lad with the smallpox in your house.”

“What if …” My voice faded. “What if André refuses to see me?”

She gave me her sudden wide smile. “He'll be the only man alive, then, who don't want you.”

At the bottom of the Open Letter was André's address. 30 Rue Grand. Rue Grand was part of the nearby warren of narrow streets. Before I went there, however, I had to tell Sir Robert that he must return alone to England.

The bluff Englishman stood in the courtyard of the Hôtel des Anglais surrounded by hatboxes and portmanteaus and my trunk. Nearby, on Sir Robert's own silver-braced trunk, his stout serving man rested, waiting.

Sir Robert greeted me with, “Where's that ripping gift for Captain d'Epinay? We have no time to waste. The carriage will be here directly.”

Not looking into Sir Robert's honest blue eyes, I explained I'd be remaining in Paris.

“Comtesse, I don't depart the city without you.”

“There's someone I must see … an old friend.”

“A man?”

“Yes.”

His handsome, ruddy face dropped. But he was calling out to his man to hump the boxes back upstairs.

“No!” I cried. “This mustn't alter your plans!”

“We English are bulldogs. Never give up,” he replied.

I gazed at the flock of sparrows picking at horse apples. “Sir Robert, there is no reason to hope.”

He glanced around in that gesture of secrecy that was becoming routine in Paris. In a low voice he said, “Comtesse, I didn't mention this before. I feared you wouldn't let me accompany you home safe to your brother. However, I would have returned here immediately.”

“But why?”

“The letters I wrote, remember them? They were to Pitt.”

He meant Sir William Pitt, and as everyone knew, it wasn't King George who ruled England, but his Prime Minister, Sir William Pitt.

Sir Robert was whispering, “He's sent a message that I'm to remain here in France and report directly to him, especially regarding the imprisonment of their French majesties. So you see, I am remaining. A kind of spy, what?” The Saxon blue eyes were bright with anticipation of adventure. “I have need for a cover, Comtesse, and that's where you can help. Nobody will suspect me if I court a lovely French lady.”

“A subterfuge, no more?”

“Comtesse, you can't stop a fellow from hoping.”

Iron wheels of the hired carriage clattered into the yard. As I left, Sir Robert was loudly explaining to the driver that he must remain, arumph, certain French ladies hold out exceptionally long.

As I walked to Rue Grand, my heart filled with love for André, my mind churning with the difficult words I must say to him, certainly I never considered that each step I took was leading me into a circle of danger.

Chapter Seven

I climbed the worn stairs. From behind numbered doors came odors. On the lower stories the expensive aroma of chicken simmering and beef à la mode, kidney beans and bacon as I rose higher. Though determined to conquer André, determined to forge a relationship of some kind with him, as I rose into the smells of cheaper food, my fears increased. What if he shouted at me to leave? What if the sight of me sickened him? Worse, what if he were totally indifferent? Worse yet, what if another woman answered the door?

The last question was one I didn't have to worry long over. The porter's wife, visibly disapproving of my white summer dress and large leghorn straw hat trimmed with broad emerald ribbons, had told me that André lived on the top floor. I rapped and got no answer.

So I perched, waiting, on the top step. A slant of dusty sunshine from the skylight bathing me, I nervously folded and refolded his Open Letter.

My fingers were black with printers' ink when footsteps jogged up the stairwell. I rose, smoothing my skirt, using the backs of my hands to avoid dirtying the silky white muslin. I wished my clothing more austere, less reminiscent of elegant women strolling in perfumed gardens. And for the first time, I realized that regretful misery for the Comte had numbed me to the conventions of mourning. I'd never once given a thought to widow's weeds.

André saw me. He halted. As he gazed through dusty sunlight at me, his face seemed to turn to marble. I could scarcely breathe, much less speak. At the window overhead a dove fluttered, darting shadows over us.

André was changed. Oh, he still had the small scar above the arched, narrow Roman nose, the same look of fine breeding. But from his deep-set gray eyes radiated small lines, and below were deep, almost purple shadows. He was different from the poetic boy I'd loved to desperation. He was leaner, harder looking. A strong man with wary and tormented eyes. My emotions were so intense that I went faint.

He broke the silence. “What are you doing here?”

I held out the sharply creased paper. “I read this.”

My calm voice might have come from another, far more poised woman. My heart, though, lurched.

“I heard you were in Paris. Goujon mentioned that you'd reconciled with your husband—in time for his well-earned execution.” That odd, atypical jealousy toward the Comte tinged André's cold voice.

The numb shock of seeing this altered, tormented-looking André left me. Raw grief ached in my chest. “There are some,” I said, and my tone was icy, “who consider the Comte a great man. Or haven't you heard of his death? His soldiers risked much to give him a last cheer. And whatever happened between the Comte and me is none of your concern.”

André's expression altered subtly. “I go further than that,” he said. “None of your affairs are my concern, Comtesse.”

That grief aching in the nerves around my heart reminded me that time and life are fleeting. “I'm Manon,” I said in a muted tone.

The dove fluttered more shadows. “I've been at the printer's all night,” André said. “This afternoon I address the Assembly. So what do you want?”

“Can't we talk in your rooms?”

“Five minutes is all I can spare,” he said. His eyes were colder than I imagined they could be. I shrank back as he passed to unlock his door.

One wall slanted sharply with the roofline and the window overlooked a narrow brick courtyard. André stepped forward to pull a skimpy velour curtain, hiding another room, but not before I glimpsed a narrow wooden cot of the type used by servants.

He turned, studying me. “So you're living with the Englishman.”

His tone was coldest metal, but my heart gave a small lurch. This was his second sign of jealousy, and jealousy meant his indifference was feigned.

“He's not my lover.”

“Well, either way, it's not my business.” He sat at a desk piled with letters, papers, books. He occupied himself with straightening the mess. “What did you wish to say to me?”

“The Open Letter's beautifully written. And brave.”

“Brave? Over four thousand human beings, most of them innocent of any crime, are slaughtered, and you call publishing a letter about this fact brave?”

“You're the only one who's made a protest,” I said.

Abruptly André asked, “Why did you leave him, the Comte?”

My expression changed as I remembered the vast empty salon with its lovely panels painted by Fragonard and Goujon's deep voice telling me that my presence in France endangered André's reputation.

“You tired of your husband, is that it? You craved lovers from another country?”

“I was pregnant,” I said in a flat, dead voice. “I still had mental blanks and we, the Comte and I, felt it safer for the child to be born in England. I miscarried on the Dover-Calais packet.”

“And then decided to remain with your English protector?”

“Jean-Pierre was ill. The doctor feared consumption.”

“I keep forgetting. Your brand of harlotry has to hide its name.”

“André, there's only been you and the Comte.”

He held up his hand. “At least spare me the lies. No woman as beautiful as you leads a nun's life.”

I twined my fingers. André's cruelty sprang from far deeper wounds than I'd inflicted.

“You've congratulated me on my writing skills, so our business is done. And I have work.” He picked up a quill, opening the ink bottle. “Shut the door after you.”

I didn't move. Taking a deep breath, I said, “André, I came here because I love you.”

He glanced up.

“I know my marriage hurt you,” I added.

“Your marriage is a matter of indifference to me. Now go back to your English lover.”

“I've told you. Sir Robert isn't that” Desperation cracked my voice. “André, you care for me, in some way. I don't know how, but you care. Else you wouldn't take the trouble to be cruel.”

“Trouble? Cruel?” He gave a laugh. “You arrive in my rooms dressed and perfumed like what you are, an expensive trollop. It's been long since I had a woman. I'm no more cruel than any man in need of a body.”