Rendezvous (9781301288946) (19 page)

"You should not have come
back,
mon ange
."

Belle turned, surprised to discover
Baptiste standing at her elbow, even more surprised by his
remark.

"And I thought you were so glad to see
me again," she mocked.

"I am—but it is a most selfish joy."
His mouth turned down at the corners, and Belle sensed for the
first time a subtle change in her friend. Despite what blows life
had dealt him, Baptiste had ever remained Baptiste, a man with a
fierce, unquenchable joy in life. Such a somber mood was most
unlike him.

"I wish Merchant had sent someone
else," he continued. "My Paris has never been good for
you."

"Perhaps this time will be different.
Who knows? If we succeed in removing Napoleon, restoring the king,
perhaps you will finally be able to show me that glorious Paris of
the old days which you have always told me about, the city that you
so adore."

Baptiste merely shook his head, his
dour expression calling forth to Belle once more the image of the
brooding dwarf king.

"Eh
bien
, in any event you are here. There
is naught to be done about it now." He sighed. Detaching the
apartment key from his belt, he pressed it into her hand. "So! And
what else would you have me be doing besides procuring you an
apartment?"

His abrupt question caught her off
guard. She had focussed so much of her energies into the task of
simply getting to Paris, surviving the floodtide of memories, she
had given little thought to the next step. As she ran her hand
distractedly through her hair, her mind worked quickly.

"Give me the rest of the day to settle
in, then tomorrow afternoon I want a meeting to lay out our
strategy, you, myself, Sinclair, and Lazare. I also want you to get
word to Marcellus Crecy and old Feydeau."

"That might prove difficult. Old
Feydeau has been summoned by an angel with higher authority than
yours."

Belle frowned at him in
confusion.

"The Angel Gabriel."
Baptiste rolled his eyes heavenward. "Feydeau is dead,
mon ami
."

Feydeau dead? Belle thought she should
have been accustomed by now to the uncertainty of life, but
Baptiste's words sent a shock through her all the same. Had it not
been only a month ago that she had stood in the innyard of the
Golden Sun, listening to Feydeau swear at her for having no
outriders?

"When did he die? How?"

"A coaching accident, not long after
your little adventure with the Coterins. Feydeau was believed to
have been drunk."

"Feydeau had his faults," Belle
protested, "but he loved his horses. I never saw him take the reins
into his hands when he was anything less that stone-cold
sober."

"There is always a first
time,
mon ange
.
Regrettably for Feydeau, it was also the last."

Belle frowned. It still made no sense
to her, but she supposed the important fact was not how Feydeau had
died, but that she had lost a reliable fellow agent.

"We shall need to find someone else to
drive coach for us," she said.

"Leave that to me. I will see to
it."

And Belle knew that Baptiste would. She
had always been able to depend upon him. She caught his hand and
squeezed it. "Despite the fact you were so unkind as to be wishing
me gone, I am very glad you are here, my old friend. I would not
have thought of accepting such a dangerous undertaking for one
moment without your support."

The little Frenchman had never been in
the least shy about accepting any sort of compliment. It therefore
surprised Belle when he tugged free of her, his cheeks mottling
with red.

"Bah! You've little use for an old
stick like me, not with a strapping specimen like your Mr.
Carrington about."

"He is not my Mr. Carrington," Belle
said. "What is your opinion of Sinclair?"

She tried to make the question sound
casual, but knew she had not succeeded when Baptiste eyed her
shrewdly. "How eagerly she asks that. Like a shy little maid,
bringing her latest swain home to meet Papa."

Belle tried to laugh at his raillery,
but felt the color seep into her cheeks. "That doesn't answer my
question."

"Eh
bien
, I think Monsieur Carrington is
tall, young, handsome, everything that I am not. I also think you
should take care,
mon
ange
." Baptiste abruptly averted his
gaze. "You should not place too much trust in any man.

"And now, I have more important things
to consider than abducting the first consul of France. Mademoiselle
Pierrepont will have my head if I don't have her fan finished by
five of the clock."

Baptiste stood on tiptoe to plant a
brusque kiss upon Belle's cheek before skittering out of the
apartment. Belle stared at the door long after it had closed behind
him, his words echoing through her mind. "You should not place too
much trust in any man."

It was not like Baptiste to offer such
platitudes or needless advice. Perhaps what disturbed her the most
was that his words had not really seemed so much like advice. They
had carried more the ring of a warning.

But a warning against whom? Sinclair?
What could Baptiste have possibly detected about Sinclair upon such
short acquaintance? This was absurd, Belle thought, rubbing her
hand across her eyes. She was reading far too much into one casual
remark. Likely she was tired. It had been a long day, a long
journey. She would feel much better after a good night's
rest.

But that notion brought a bitter smile
to her lips. When had she ever enjoyed a restful night in Paris?
Her gaze strayed back to the window. Her earlier excitement and her
joy in seeing Baptiste again had fled. With a feeling of dread, she
marked the sun's downward course, shedding a final burst of golden
glory above the rooftops, the street shadows
lengthening.

In a few hours it would be night, and
eventually she would have to try to sleep. She might assure herself
that she had survived the return to Paris in full light of day, but
the dark would release all those phantoms she had subdued. The
moment she closed her eyes, the nightmares would crowd forward: of
Jean-Claude, of the Revolution, the massacres, the guillotine and
the heavy, dank walls of the Conciergerie

No one has ever been slain by a memory,
she told herself again. Then why could she already feel herself
dying a little inside?

CHAPTER EIGHT

His first night in Paris was not the
worst Sinclair had ever spent, but he could not rank it among the
best, either. The next morning he awoke to the sound of rain
drumming against the window and a dull ache behind his
eyes.

He had slept poorly, and insomnia was
not an affliction he was accustomed to endure. It was partly the
fault of this damned bed, he thought as he rolled over with a
groan. He stared with disgust at the golden canopy suspended
tent-like above him, the corners caught in the grasp of fat,
grinning cherubs. The mattress and pillows were too soft. His
weight seemed to sink beneath a billowing cloud of silk, silk
moreover that reeked of eau de heliotrope. The cloying scent clung
to him, making him feel like he had spent the night with a Covent
Garden doxy.

But the bed, he had to admit, had only
been part of the problem. Most of his sleeplessness was owing to
the sounds that had emanated from the bedchamber adjoining his, the
creak of the floorboards, the footfalls which told him that Belle
had stayed awake well past midnight.

Glancing toward the sheer bed-curtains
drawn together to keep the draft from his naked flesh, Sinclair
could just make out the gray light of morning and wondered if Belle
had paced until nearly dawn. More terrifying dreams? Or was her
restlessness owing to those memories that frequently brought that
look of hopelessness to her eyes?

Sinclair's urge to go to her had been
strong, but he knew from bitter experience she would spurn his
comfort. Belle seemed to have learned a long time ago to endure her
pain alone. Who had helped her to con that lesson, the Comte de
Egremont, Jean-Claude Varens? Astonishing, Sinclair thought, that
one could begin to harbor an intense loathing for such a noble
gentleman, one that he scarcely knew.

All things considered, it was for the
best that he had curbed his desire to slip into Belle's room. He
was no saint, and Belle had been honest enough to admit she was not
impervious to his touch. What might have begun as comfort could
have ended far differently. He had known casual encounters in bed
before and so, he suspected, had Belle, but he feared that the
emotion that pulsed between them was too intense for that. She
might finish by hating him, and he didn't want that. But it was a
prospect he had to face all the same, for it had occurred to him
there might be one other reason to account for her
sleeplessness.

She could be suffering from a guilty
conscience. An ugly thought that—and he had lain awake a great deal
of the night, attempting to convince himself beyond all doubt that
it could not be so, that it could not possibly be Belle who was the
traitor he had been sent to capture. His every instinct told him
that she was not, but could instinct be trusted when clouded by an
image of hair of spun gold; eyes, the color of an azure sky; a face
so rife with hidden strength and delicate beauty it could haunt a
man to the end of his days? How he prayed the counteragent would
prove to be Lazare. If it was, he could derive great pleasure from
putting an end to Lazare's activities in passing information to the
enemy.

Slowly Sinclair raised to a sitting
position, wincing at his stiff muscles. However the affair turned
out, he needed to stop thinking and start acting. He was in Paris
now. Time to cease the speculations and set about finding out the
truth.

He started to fling the coverlet aside
when he heard the door to his chamber swing open. Astonished, he
froze in position, observing a shadowy figure rustling about beyond
the bedcurtains. Who in thunder would enter his room that boldly?
He had been careless in not locking his door, in not keeping a
weapon close to hand, especially with a madman like Lazare, overly
fond of his knife, living just two floors above in the
garret.

Cautiously Sinclair parted his
bedcurtains just enough to peer out. He relaxed somewhat. It was
only that woman Paulette, Belle's erstwhile maid, her brown curls
peeking out from beneath a frilled cap. She had deposited a white
pitcher upon the dressing table and now stooped to pick Sinclair's
shirt off the floor. In one day he had already managed to reduce
his room to a state of comfortable clutter. Paulette would have
appeared the image of the perfect maid tidying up, garbed in her
somber gown, except for the thin red ribbon forming a bright slash
about her throat and an indefinable something in her manner that
rendered Sinclair uneasy.

As he watched her bend to retrieve his
breeches, all but caressing the fabric, he felt his flesh crawl.
Thrusting the bed-curtain back, he gripped the sheet about himself
and boomed out, "What the devil do you think you are doing in
here?"

She straightened with a tiny gasp,
clasping her hands to her ample bosom. "Monsieur Carrington! How
you startled me. I thought you still asleep."

"That doesn't answer my
question."

"I brought you up some hot water for
shaving and started to tidy some of your things. Since you have no
valet—"

"I manage quite well without one. You
might have seen fit to knock, mademoiselle."

"But I did, monsieur. You must not have
heard me." She lowered her lashes demurely but not before Sinclair
sensed her hot gaze rake over him. He felt at a distinct
disadvantage. It was difficult to appear indignant reclining on a
bed, garbed only in a sheet. With a low curse he stretched down to
scoop up his dressing robe. Retreating behind the bed-curtains, he
struggled into the garment, tying the sash with a hard
tug.

When he emerged, he discovered Mistress
Beauvais had nonchalantly gone on with her task of cleaning up,
moving toward his cloak draped over a chair and his umbrella.
Sinclair leaped out of bed and started toward her, his bare feet
padding across the thick rosette-patterned carpet. He reached her
side in time to snatch the umbrella from her grasp and toss it upon
a gilt-edged dressing table. It was unlikely that anyone could
detect the secret compartment in the handle that housed his papers,
but he wasn't taking any chances.

"
Merci bien
, mademoiselle," he said.
"If I require anything else, I will ring."

She used the opportunity of his
nearness to sidle up against him. "I could help you with your
shaving," she purred. "I have helped many gentlemen
before."

"I would never trust any woman with a
razor."

She flung back her head, giving a
throaty laugh. "Monsieur is so droll." Making no attempt to hide
the hunger in her gaze, she brushed her hips against his. "Monsieur
wears no nightshirt? Even in October our nights in Paris can be
cold. You will catch your death."