Hearts Beguiled (23 page)

❧

The gypsy caravan passed the burned-out shell of an abandoned slaughterhouse. The dark-skinned man on the big roan peeled away and the tumbrel followed him, rolling silently on oiled wheels through a crumbling brick arch and into a black cavern that had once been the bleeding and gutting yard.

The place stank, although it hadn't been used in years. Max remembered it from his childhood, and it had been a ruin even then. But the smells of blood and rotting entrails had seeped into the stones and packed earth long ago and were there to stay. The fire had destroyed the roof, so that the night sky showed dark and shadowy through the fallen timbers overhead. A hot wind had come up and stormclouds shrouded the moon. There was the feel of rain in the air.

Torchlight flared in back of them, casting their shadows against the far wall. Prado dismounted; Max stayed in the tumbrel and pulled his tricorne forward so that the brim came to just above his eyes.

A man, flanked on each side by minions carrying torches, came through the arch. "Couldn't you have picked a better place for this?" he said in an aggrieved voice. "It stinks like a butcher's midden in here."

Prado laughed and said something soothing and apologetic while Max sat in silence and watched the man with shadowed eyes. He was a small man, dressed all in black, with long, snaggy dark hair that hung loosely over his shoulders. The torchlight glazed the lenses of his thick spectacles, obscuring the man's eyes. Max committed the face to memory; it was easy for there was a deep, puckered scar on one cheek, like a brand. The man had never told Prado his name, so Prado called him the Scarred One.

The Scarred One came over to the tumbrel to look inside. "Whatever in the name of heaven is that?"

"It's an aerostat," Prado said.

"A what?"

"A balloon."

"And the salt?"

"It's there."

The man blinked. He had, Max saw, protruding eyes with thick lids, like those of a turtle, that were grotesquely magnified by the spectacles. His attention fell on Max. "Who's he? You've never brought him with you before."

Prado's teeth flashed. "My cousin Ludo. He's an ox."

Max stared down at the man, the vacuous look of the dim-witted on his face.

The man blinked again, then brought a scented handkerchief to his nose. "Have him unload the stuff then, and make him hurry. Christ, it stinks in here."

A large black berlin was driven through the arch. With the help of the two minions, Max unloaded the salt from the tumbrel into the carriage. The low voices of Prado and the Scarred One drifted over them while they worked. Max didn't bother trying to listen; Prado would recount the whole conversation to him later.

The Scarred One insisted that Prado and Max should leave first. It had started to rain, hard enough to turn the narrow street into a gulley of filthy, rushing water. Max, sitting in the tumbrel with icy water dripping down his neck, wondered why it always rained when he had to follow someone at night.

He drove the tumbrel for several blocks at a leisurely pace, with Prado walking the roan beside him and humming tunelessly under his breath. When they rounded the comer, a shadow emerged from an alley and leaped on board the tumbrel. Max slid off the other end, running on silent feet back toward the slaughterhouse. When the black berlin emerged from beneath the archway, it acquired an extra and unseen passenger.

❧

Two hours later Max stood in the door to his bedroom, a puddle of water forming around his feet. She was there-lying on her side on the very edge of the bed, her face turned toward the window. Relief overwhelmed him, so intense that tears stung his eyes and he swayed slightly on his feet. He hadn't known how afraid he was of finding her gone.

The jalousies were open, and wind blew rain into the room, no doubt staining the floor. But the owl's perch was empty, so he didn't go to shut the window. He stood, instead, at the door and listened to her breathing. She was awake. "Gabrielle?" he said softly, and when she didn't answer he undressed in the dark, in silence.

He got into bed beside her. She didn't move. He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He thought he could, with his practiced touch, make her want him in spite of her anger. But he didn't want to treat her that way—like a mere vessel to be used to slake his own hunger. He wondered if he could win her forgiveness with words, but although he tried several sentences in his mind, none sounded right. So after a moment he closed his eyes and turned onto his stomach, away from her.

The bed moved beneath him. Then her naked body rubbed against the bare flesh of his buttocks. His manhood grew thick and stiff where it was pressed between his stomach and the mattress. It was all he could do not to roll her over right then and plunge into her, deep and hard, to bury himself in her hot, wet softness. He clenched his teeth, fighting for self-control.

Her hand lightly, tentatively touched his arm. "Max . . . ? Please don't be angry with me. I can't bear it when you're angry with me."

He turned, gathering her into his arms. God, but he loved her. For a moment he couldn't breathe. "I thought you were angry with me," he said.

She had shuddered when he first touched her. Now she was pressing the whole length of her body onto his. Her tautened nipples scraped across his chest. He tightened his jaw, and sweat filmed his eyes.

"I was so furious with you, I could have branched you myself," she said, and her voice again took on an angry edge as she remembered. ' 'But after you left I began to grow afraid you weren't coming back."

He stroked her, his hands cupping her buttocks and pulling her pelvis up and onto him, making her feel the hard proof of his desire. He started to rub himself against the soft curly nest of hair that was the fount of all his torment and his joy. But then he had to stop because he was so desperate for her by now, he thought he might possibly burst.

"I'll always come back, ma mie," he said, while he thought, Gabrielle, Gabrielle, I know it's important to talk this through, but I can't right now. I want you so badly. I need you. I have to—

She shuddered again, then a harsh, strangled sound tore from her throat. He felt the wetness of tears where her face lay buried against his neck, and his heart plunged into his gut.

"Oh, Jesus, Gabrielle, don't cry." He hugged her tight against him, hating himself. "Oh, God . . . I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

Her mouth smothered the rest of his words, her lips pressing down on his, grinding them against his teeth and driving his head back against the pillow. He pulled her leg over his thighs and she rose above him, swinging her hips up and around to straddle him. He could make out her shape in the darkness but not her features. Then a stray beam from one of the lamplights outside pierced the night and the rain, and came shining through the window to turn her hair into a crown of fire. Or a halo. He smiled at the thought. Gabrielle, his angel of fire and passion.

As he watched, she rose above him, high on her knees, and taking his hard length in her hand, slowly, slowly, impaled herself upon it. And slowly, slowly he shut his eyes and, though he had no wings, he felt himself fly.

Afterward, Max lay holding his wife within the crook of his arm. His muscles felt heavy with exhaustion and his thoughts were filled with her, his Gabrielle . . . Winning her had been hard enough. Keeping her, he now realized, was going to be even harder. Somehow he would have to make amends for tonight. And although he couldn't yet give her what she wanted, which was his unconditional trust, he could at least give her a slice of his pride by groveling at her feet for forgiveness.

He took a deep breath to gird himself for the coming ordeal and constricted the muscles of the arm that held her. "Gabrielle?"

Her hand lay on his heart. Sighing, she twisted and coiled her fingers through the hair on his chest. "No," she said.

"But you don't even know what I was going to say."

"I do know. If you think, Maximilien de Saint-Just, that I'll forgive you for going out smuggling on our wedding night—"

"Our wedding night was last night."

"—just because you bestow a few kisses—"

"A few kisses!"

"Or a lot of kisses." She pinched his nipple. "No, no, I shall exact a greater payment."

With growing trepidation Max waited to hear what she would demand of him. He couldn't possibly make love to her again tonight. At the moment he couldn't raise his little finger, let alone anything else.

"I saw the most adorable little hat in the window of Madame Benin's," Gabrielle was saying.

"It's yours," Max said, laughing, and trying not to think about the fact that Madame Bertin made hats for the queen, and charged accordingly.

Then a sudden thought struck him that brought a strange lump to his throat. Out of love, he had been about to offer Gabrielle the gift of his pride and she, out of love, had given it back to him unopened. Out of love.

And in that moment he believed, truly believed, that what they had was special and could survive anything—anger, disappointment . . . even secrets.

And so, with his wife's hair spread across his chest and her head nestled in the crook of his arm, Maximilien de Saint-Just shut his eyes and fell asleep listening to the rain.

❧

It was still raining the next afternoon.

Abel Hachette stood at his library window, scanning the passersby in the street below and growing more impatient by the minute. Max had promised to stop by late last night to report on the smuggling operation, but he never came. All that morning, Hachette had waited, and still no Max. It wasn't that he was worried—Max could take care of himself. No, Hachette wasn't anxious; he was excited. He had a surprise for his Black Angel and he could hardly wait to give it to him.

Hachette remembered the first time he had stood at this window waiting for Max. Until the last moment, he really had planned to have the gendarmes there to arrest the young brigand. He had even tried out in his mind several biting remarks he would thrust in that handsome, arrogant face as the boy was hauled off to a well-deserved scaffold.

But he had never sent for the gendarmes after all that day eleven years ago, and when the clock on the mantel chimed first twelve and then twelve-thirty, Hachette had felt a keen disappointment. At least there was some consolation, he had thought, in that he hadn't made an ass of himself by dragging the police out on a fool's errand. After the clock chimed one, Hachette rose from behind his rosewood desk and rang for his servant. His feet, of their own accord, carried him over to the window for one last look at the throng of pedestrians and vehicles that as usual clogged the busy Rue Royal. There was still no sign of the young aristocrat.

One half of the double doors opened behind him.

"Bring my hat and cane, if you please," Hachette said, turning around, "I'm—"

"Forgive my tardiness," came that mocking, drawling voice, this time unmuffled by any mask, and Hachette felt a chill dance down his spine. "I was unavoidably detained. I had this foolish suspicion you would summon the police."

Sweat started out on the financier's white brow. "How . . . how did you get in?"

Mocking brows arched upward over cool gray eyes. "Through the front door."

Hachette walked stiffly over to his desk. He felt for the seat of his chair with his legs and slowly sat down. He assumed a stern face. "Well, brigand—"

"My friends call me Max."

"And what do your enemies call you?"

"They don't live long enough to call me anything."

Hachette started to sneer at this bravado until he saw the glint of self-mockery in the boy's eyes. He laughed instead. "I'll have to remember what a dangerous character you are . . . Max. Since we are going into business together."

They made three shipments in all in the two years before France openly entered the war on the side of the Americans and the secret gun running became unnecessary, and therefore unprofitable. When he met with Max on a wharf at the busy port of Nantes on the morning the first shipment was to sail, Hachette was beset with fresh doubts, thinking what a fool he'd been to trust a stranger—a highwayman, no less— with a fortune in muskets and paper-wrapped cartridges.

"Once you sell the guns . . . how do I know you won't disappear into the Caribbean with my ship and the profits?" he said, trying to hide his nervousness.

Smells from the dock came through the open porthole with the breeze—cinnamon, tobacco, coffee, and over it all the stink of rotting fish. Max, who was bent over the captain's table studying a chart of the harbor, didn't even bother to look up. "You don't know, you can only hope. The same way I hoped you wouldn't deliver me to the hangman the afternoon I walked into your house unmasked and unarmed."

"Were you unarmed?"

Max smiled slowly until his eyes were nearly shut. "Hell, no."

When Max returned with the profits from the final shipment, Hachette was there to meet the ship at the dock, as he was at the end of every shipment. For always Hachette never quite believed Max would return. Yet when Max handed over the gold bullion and silver coins the Americans paid for the guns, Hachette wondered why he'd ever doubted the boy.

As Hachette counted out Max's percentage for this, their final shipment, he realized with real sorrow that his strange association with Maximilien de Saint-Just was about to end.

Curious, he asked the young man—a man he had drunk with and eaten with, a man he now trusted as a son, but whom he knew not at all—if he intended to join the cream of the French aristocracy who, following the example of the marquis de Lafayette, was volunteering in droves to fight for glory and liberty in America.

Max, who was packing the last of his belongings into a battered sea chest, shrugged indifferently. "I don't take orders very well."

"But you'd be giving orders, boy, not taking them. You're a nobleman, so you can buy yourself an officer's commission. Your father the comte is a marichal, after all. Surely he—"

Max's laugh was bitter. "My father wouldn't spend a sou to buy me a seat on a coach going to hell."

"Pity then you have such a poor relationship with the comte," Hachette said, wondering aloud. "With his influence at court you could go far, even get a pension."

"I'm his bastard, Abel. My father acknowledges my existence. That's the extent of our relationship."

"I see. Still, you've made enough money in the last two years to buy yourself a dozen commissions—"

For the first time, Hachette saw Max lose his temper. The young man slammed the lid of the chest down so hard it bounced. "Dammit, Abel, what the hell business is it of yours anyway? If you must know, I see no compelling reason why I should want to fight for a country that isn't even mine and means nothing to me."

"I thought it did mean something to you." He waved his arm around the cabin. "Why do this then, these shipments of arms?"

"I did it for the money, Abel. The same as you. To fight for something means you have to be willing to die for it."

"You're willing to risk you life for money but not for liberty?"

"What is liberty? It's only a word."

Hachette stared at the youthful, handsome face, browned by the weeks at sea and flushed now with anger. "What does matter to you then?" he asked. "What do you want out of life?"

Max stared back at him for a moment longer, then his breath left him in a sigh. "To discover things. To invent the things that can't be discovered because they don't yet exist. Hell, maybe I just want to keep from being bored."

He isn't one of us after all, Hachette had thought then, hiding his disappointment, and the subject was dropped.

Hachette hadn't really expected to see the young brigand again after they had parted that day but, as was so often the case with Max, he had been wrong. For Max had shown up at his house in the Faubourg Saint-Honore" a little over a year later and he had brought with him the key to the English ciphers, the code used by the enemy in their battle communications.

Abel Hachette had sat behind his rosewood desk, holding the cipher key with hands that shook. "Dieu, this is incredible. Where did you—"

"From a bedroom in London."

"But how . . ."

"I stole it."

"This is incredible, Max. Do you realize what this is worth to the army, to the king?"

Max smiled. "That's why I brought it to you, my dear Abel. Because you would know how much it's worth. And you can sell it for me."

Hachette glanced sideways at the young man, who paced with restless excitement across the parquet floor. It was time, he decided, for the boy to choose just what sort of man he was to become.

"France's treasury is depleted," Hachette said. "This American war has turned out to be more expensive than anyone anticipated. Why not sell this back to the English instead?" -

Max stopped, whirling to stare at Hachette in astonishment.

"England can afford to pay whatever you ask," Hachette said. "I doubt our king could scrape together a hundred louis—"

"Then give it to him for nothing, for God's sake!" Max threw himself into one of Hachette's fragile gilt chairs. He scowled at the old man, then began to laugh. "Don't look so shocked, Abel. I do have some principles and I even try to live up to them occasionally. When living up to them doesn't interfere with my survival."

"Then you do care what happens to France?"

For a moment Hachette thought he was going to get the flippant reply that was so typical of the boy, but Max had said, "Hell, I'm a Frenchman. Of course I care."

"How old are you?" Hachette asked suddenly.

Max shrugged. "I don't know. Around twenty, I guess."

"Twenty! Dieu, that means you were only seventeen the year you captained our first shipment of muskets!"

Max flashed his cocky smile. "I'll tell you another secret, Abel. I had never sailed before that day. I'd never even set foot on a ship before in my life. I didn't know a poop deck from a sparsail."

Hachette burst into laughter. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, and he had to mop them up with his lace-edged handkerchief. Then he sobered suddenly and stared hard at the younger man.

"Max, my dear boy, I have a business proposition to put to you . . ."

And until this moment it had been a very profitable partnership, indeed. Profitable for the cabal and profitable for France and the cause of revolution. Abel Hachette thought of that now as he spotted the dark head of the man he had been waiting for coming toward him on the rain-slick Rue Royal. And he made a silent vow to that man, to Maximilien de

Saint-Just, whom he now realized was as dear to him—as necessary to him—as a son.

I will let nothing, or no one, come between you and your destiny.