Love's First Light (7 page)
The voices behind him seemed to be receding, but he was too afraid to stop. He crossed a bridge to the small island and the medieval beginnings of Paris—Île de la Cité. Then he turned down the winding street that ran behind Notre Dame.
The cathedral loomed massive and imposing as he made his way through the carefully tended trees and bushes that made up the back gardens. He didn’t have time for reflection, but something in him pulsed, sad and angry at the state of the cathedral. It had been gutted, looted, turned hostage as a massive storage house for a government that no longer believed in God.
Don’t stop . . . don’t stop . . .
But he did. He paused, pressing his back into the stone wall that rose so high he could no longer see the shape of the crescent moon. He panted for breath, then held it in for a long moment so that he could hear sounds of pursuit. Nothing. Naught but the sounds of the wind rustling through the branches overhead and the distant lapping of the river.
He’d lost them. Relief weakened his knees, and his body collapsed at the base of the wall. He sat, knees upraised, head hanging down, dragging in long, deep gulps of air. Had the soldiers really given up? Or would they appear at any moment? And even if he escaped now . . .
Would Robespierre ever stop looking for him?
He didn’t know. In fact, the only thing he knew for certain was that he had to get out of Paris.
Now.
Chapter Six
1794—Carcassonne, France
It was just before dawn, the time when the stars gave their last twinkle toward a sleeping world and the moon’s glow faded through the firmament. Like ghostly arms, the night lights were slowly fading to give way to the sun and day.
Scarlett pulled her warmest dress over her head and stretched her arms back to button it, only managing to get it three-quarters up and then two at the top, leaving a gap in the middle of her upper back. Oh well. Nothing was fitting right these days anyway since she didn’t have any clothes for these few short months left in her pregnancy. She scooped up her bonnet and turned toward the door.
Her heart pounded as she grasped the knob to her sister’s room. She’d nearly promised her mother she wouldn’t go to the cemetery anymore, but she had to. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t through grieving Daniel’s death, but she knew that wasn’t true. Her initial infatuation with the man had soon faded, leaving him forever gone on army business and she . . . lonely. But when she visited the grave, she felt, for reasons she wasn’t quite sure, peaceful. As if in remembering him and talking to him, they were finally close. Perhaps it was not so much his death she still mourned, but their distant marriage.
Her room was in the back of the second story—unfortunate for nightly escapades. She had to go through Stacia’s room to gain entry to the short hall at the top of the stairs. Thankfully her frail little sister slept like the dead. Her mother, though, was another thing altogether.
Her mother’s room, which was much larger and opened directly into the hall, was across from Scarlett’s room. Scarlett couldn’t make a sound on the stairs or her mother would arise amid tangled covers and come running to discover what crises had her daughter up and about so early on a Saturday. Without market day, they were all supposed to be sleeping later.
It was curious, the way the night seemed to call to her and wake her during this pregnancy. She’d never had trouble sleeping until Daniel’s death. Now she only snatched five or six hours before something woke her. Was it loneliness? Anticipation for the babe to come? Fear for a future that looked so hazy and unwritten?
Scarlett shook away the thoughts, bit her lower lip, and crept to the top of the stairs. If only there were some light. Her brow knit together as she took the first step. It creaked a little as she grasped hard on the handrail. Leaning her chest back as she’d seen all pregnant women do when traversing stairs, she crept down them until she was sure she’d reached the bottom, her foot feeling about to ascertain it was, indeed, the last step.
Quicker now, her steps more certain, she made it through the sitting room and into the dark kitchen. One hand reached out in front of her, the other curled protectively around her stomach. My goodness, she was hungry. Reaching for a long baguette, she tore off a hunk, then seeing the leftovers of roast duck from yesterday’s supper, she picked up the plate, grabbed some cheese—and then laughed at herself. She might as well pack a basket, eat while sitting at the gravestone, and watch the sun come up.
Thinking of the sunrise brought to mind the dark stranger from the market. He’d acted so odd! As if he hadn’t conversed with people in a long time and had forgotten how to comport himself in society. Though his black cloak hid him, she’d seen more of him in the morning light than on their first encounter. He was all tall, lean, tightly wound muscle and had a look as if anything might set him off into some ominous explosion. Despite his deep hood, she’d been able to see glimpses of his face. Longish straight black hair swung over brooding eyes. The memory of his eyes, so intensely blue and filled with fear and pain, brought her thoughts up short as she heaved the basket on her arm. There was a longing in those eyes . . . something she’d not seen before. Some remembered horror shining from them. Those sapphire-rimmed, pale blue eyes had struck her heart like a ghost visiting from a crypt.
Or hell’s tunnels.
She turned and made her way back to the sitting room toward her cloak hanging on a hook. She took it down, slipped into the sleeves, and tied the sash firmly above her stomach. With the basket on her arm, she eased open the front door.
Carcassonne was beautiful at dawn. It was two cities in one. Across the Aude River sat the Cité, the ancient town, with its massive, crumbling castle. And then there was the Bastide St. Louis, where the people now lived, where she had grown up. A bridge, made of row after row of stone, connected the two in a graceful rise and fall over the foam of the river. Few people walked it these days, but there was a time when the castle was the stronghold of the southern boundary of France. Now it was mostly mounds of crumbling, fallen, dangerous stone.
She heard her steps ring out as she crossed to the center of the bridge. She paused and stared at the castle. It was still magnificent. Standing there, staring at the shadowy structure rising against the gray-tinged horizon, her breath caught. A shadow of the greatness it once represented, the structure seemed tonight as alone and echoing and mysterious as the man who had stood at the path of her husband’s grave.
The graveyard was just to the right of the castle. Vast and deeply interwoven with moonlit headstones among thick green vegetation, it seemed a world all its own. She’d visited her father’s grave here, but not so often—not often enough to know every pathway as she did now. Now she knew this place like her own house in the dark—the winding stone path, the brush that wasn’t cut back enough and snagged her skirts if she wasn’t careful, the names from centuries past, worn by rain and wind so that they were as faint as the memories of the dead. She supposed that was why she’d chosen these early morning visits. Everything here was mystery; a perfect match to her feelings about Daniel and their marriage.
Daniel. How he’d dazzled her when they first met. As her steps continued over the cobbled walk, her own memories rose before her.
Her cousin, the Countess de Beauharnais, was born and raised on a sugar plantation in the French province Trois-Ilets, Martinique, the Caribbean Island that was an overseas department of France. The countess had married well above her station and convinced Scarlett’s mother by letter that there were many available alliances to be made for her beautiful daughter. Since Scarlett’s father had passed away several years ago, Scarlett’s mother was quick to respond that her daughter would travel to Paris to make such a match.
They’d packed her off in a coach on a clear blue day, where the gentle wind blew her thick, dark curls away from her cherry-colored bonnet. Her small, stuffed trunk was secured atop the vehicle with the best clothing, slippers, and jewelry that they could scrounge together. She would never tell her mother the mortification she’d felt when sized up by her benevolent cousin. But Louisa had been generous. She’d commented immediately on Scarlett’s lithe form as she evaluated her in an up and down movement of her light brown eyes. With a dazzling smile, she pulled Scarlett into a dressing room overflowing with gowns, the fabrics of which were unknown in the backwater of Carcassonne. Silks and brocades; laces and undergarments that had names Scarlett had never heard; overcoats and wraps of fur and satin; and long, glorious gowns of colors she’d never dreamed existed in the world. Louisa had magically, it seemed, summoned a swarm of talented seamstresses, all of whom were more than willing and able to remake a married woman’s castoffs into the gowns of a debutante. Louisa was single-minded in her mission to prepare Scarlett to meet the Paris society. But it had all proven unnecessary. It took only that first dinner party, when Scarlett met the tall and handsome Daniel Robespierre, to strike a match.
Oh, how her heart had jumped when he first looked her way. He’d stopped mid-sentence and stared, a slow smile upon his face. She looked down, her face growing warm, and then stole a quick look at him—only to discover that he was walking toward her. As her aunt made the introductions, Scarlett had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. Then he bent over her hand, brushed it with a mere whisper of a touch of his lips, and looked up and into her eyes. She stood very still, then smiled. When he smiled back, it brought a thrill to her throat. She opened her mouth to say something clever, but all that came out was, “Oh.”
He grinned at her then, one side of his mouth kicking up, his eyes alight with suppressed laughter.
They seated him next to her at the long, lavish table, and she quickly learned that Daniel was a young lawyer, a patriot, and dedicated to the Révolution. He was clearly comfortable in their surroundings, but to Scarlett it was all a foreign world, where crystal glasses clinked in toasts, where dish upon dish was served by a man dressed as richly as any of those seated. Where she watched the others to learn what to do, which elegant fork to raise, when to dip her fingers into the silver bowl of gleaming water, when to laugh.
She knew Daniel saw her ineptitude, but he didn’t regard it with any care. Instead he would motion to her when to lift her cloth napkin and dab at her lips, when to lift her glass for another toast.
To the Republic!
It was their cheering cry. She turned to him and whispered the unspeakable. “What do you want . . . the Republic?”
He could have disparaged such naiveté. Instead, he leaned in and whispered something that she hadn’t known could ring throughout her entire being. “Freedom.”
After the meal they took a walk through the garden of the estate. Daniel left his place in the parlor with the other men as up-and-coming speaker and thinker to take her aside and explain the way of the world outside of Carcassonne.
“But how will you overcome the Crown? The king? Is not such thinking treason?”
“Treason is now siding
with
the king. The Republic believes the king is treasonous to his country. The royal debt, the taxes on the poor, the oppression of a splendorous, decadent crown. They live on their next whim whilst the people starve.”
with
the king. The Republic believes the king is treasonous to his country. The royal debt, the taxes on the poor, the oppression of a splendorous, decadent crown. They live on their next whim whilst the people starve.”
Scarlett nodded. She had seen the suffering. After her father, a mason worker and jack-of-all-trades in Carcassonne, died, she, her sister, and her mother had suffered to pay the tax, selling many family heirlooms to keep their home. It was what propelled Scarlett on this search for a husband.
Daniel took her by the shoulders. “I plan to be one of those who ends the tyranny of the crown. Like my uncle, Maximilien, I will work for, and if need be, die for the Republic.”
The weeks that followed held that same enchantment. He took her driving around the city of Paris, showing her the sights and places like the indoor tennis court near Versailles, where the assembly had signed the Tennis Court Oath, and the Bastille. He spoke to her in that same passionate way that overwhelmed crowds and left them shouting and waving their fists in agreement. Her shouts were internal, but she knew when she looked at him, stared into his dark, sure eyes, she had become his greatest supporter. He held her heart in the palm of his hand; all he had to do was ask.
It happened late one night in her aunt’s parlor. As if some hidden signal had been given, their elders had filed from the room, exchanging amused glances that had only added to Scarlett’s nerves—and anticipation.
As the door clicked shut, Daniel took her hands into both of his. They stood there for a long, silent moment, the crackling of the fire in the background, her nervous smile framing the moment. Waiting . . . waiting for him to speak.
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