Tender the Storm (50 page)

She waited until he had recovered from the shock of her words before continuing, "And I'll take payment in gold, if you please, Monsieur
Colbet
."

"Gold?"
Colbet
was sure he had misheard her.

She gave him a sly smile and dropped her voice as though they were in a roomful of eavesdroppers. "Gold, Monsieur
Colbet
. I'm investing it with . . ." She bit her lip, and said helplessly, "It's a secret I'm not permitted to divulge. But payment must be made in gold."

Colbet
escorted her to the front doors where her huge footman was stationed. He was remembering little Zoë from the old days when he had been no more than a clerk in her father's bank. Surprising himself, he voiced the thought that Zoë Devereux gave
every evidence
that one day she might fill her father's shoes.

Zoë gave him a startled look. She knew that he was mistaken, but saw no point in contradicting him. Her father had been as much a gambler as he'd been a financier. He'd enjoyed taking risks. She liked to play safe. One thing she did admit, how
ever. For a girl who preferred a quiet life, she had traveled some very strange paths in the last little while.

A short time later, Charles Lagrange's thoughts ran along similar channels. There was a lot more to Zoë Devereux, he was thinking, than anyone would suppose from her demure, faintly diffident manner. In the short while that it took to drink one cup of coffee, she had secured a promise from him not only to supply her with false passports but also to inquire about passage on the first ship that was bound for America.

"I shall pay in gold," she had told him, and had named an exorbitant figure.

Clever, Lagrange had been thinking. In the first place, the sum was more than enough to cover expenses. His own share of the necessary bribes was generous. And in the second place, gold was a more acceptable currency in these days when paper money was daily losing its value.

He'd tried to quiz her to no effect. She refused to confide in him. Not that it mattered. He had a very good idea of what Zoë was up to.

It was the last Thursday of the month, and the day on which Zoë regularly held her salon. As she mixed with her guests, her head was held proudly. Her gaze was clear. Only the death grip on her fan betrayed the turbulence of her emotions.

"Relax." The quiet command came from Rolfe. He was well aware of the reason for Zoë's tension, and just as aware that she wished nothing better than for a hole to open in the floor and swallow him up. "Few of this crowd will raise an eyebrow when they see us together. How should they? It would be a case of 'the pot calling the kettle black.'
" He
spoke the last few words in English.

Eyes snapping, Zoë turned on him. "For the love of God, keep your voice down!" Her eyes swept over the crush of people. "If anyone should hear you . . ."

Grinning, he baited, "
Zoë,
does this mean that you care?"

"Of course I care," she retorted without thinking, then quickly improvised. "If you are taken for
a you
- know-what, then I may be also."

He laughed, and, as if to test her patience to its limits, moved to join Jean Tallien, one of the Convention's foremost deputies. Tallien, Zoë observed, seemed to have fully recovered from the injuries he had received in an attempt on his life. She thought of her brother and hoped fervently that he had spared the deputy's life by design. She still could not reconcile her brother's character with what she had heard of the ruthless assassin,
Le Cache-Cache.

The sound of Tallien's laughter diverted her thoughts. He and Rolfe, she noted, seemed to be on the friendliest terms. Zoë was not partial to Deputy Tallien. The blond Adonis was not yet thirty. At the height of the Terror, he had been Robespierre's man and one of the most bloodthirsty
enrages
of that tribe. In his turn he had fallen foul of Robespierre. Who could have foreseen that in that final confrontation, it was the master who would be toppled by his disciple? And now Tallien was so far to the right that he was suspected of Royalist sympathies. Monsieur Tallien, Zoë decided, was a man of many masks.

The deputy's wife caught her eye, and Zoë obediently answered the implicit invitation to join her. Theresia Tallien, like Zoë, was the daughter of a great banking family. At sixteen, she had been married to an aristocrat. She had fled Paris only to fall into Tallien's hands. Faced with the choice of the scaffold or life as Tallien's mistress, the beautiful young girl of eighteen had elected the lesser of the two evils. After Robespierre's fall from power, public opinion had forced Tallien to wed the girl.

In that moment, Zoë experienced a surge of intense resentment against men in general. Her face wore a polite smile, but inwardly she fumed against a creation where the male animal was so much more powerful than the female of the species. Women did not stand a chance against that most ruthless and rapacious predator of all God's creatures. How could God permit such a thing? There was no logic to it. It was unjust. It forced women to use their beauty, yes, and their sex, to sue for terms. She thought of her sister, Claire, and Theresia Tallien, and Josephine de Beauharnais and a dozen other women who were present that evening, including
herself
, and she wanted to vent her fury. They were branded as fallen women. And yet, it was scarcely through choice that they had accepted some man's protection. And what was the point of this protection? Irony of ironies, it was to save them from the power of other men.

A fragment of conversation came back to her. Marie Roussillon, in the dormitory of the girls' school in Rouen, had wanted to know the meaning of
carte blanche.

And Zoë had answered, "Some women sell their beauty and bodies for money. Not respectable women, you understand. Not the kind of women gentlemen marry, but the other sort."

And she was now lumped with "the other sort." She made up her mind that from that moment on she would never again judge the morals of any woman, whatever the circumstances. It was men who were responsible for making these distinctions between women, and women who were stupid enough to accept them. When her eyes chanced to brush Rolfe's, she made no attempt to shade the depths of her reproach.

"What the
deuce .
'..?"
Rolfe scowled, and his eyes raked the people on either side of Zoë. He was almost sure that someone had slighted his wife. He was furious and half-rose in his chair, intending to go to her to give her his support. In his hearing, no one dared to make slighting observations to Zoë, else there would be hell to pay. Another long look from Zoë stayed the impulse to fly to her defense.

It was he who was the object of her spleen. Rolfe smothered the small pang of conscience which Zoë's damning look had kindled. She was ashamed to be known as any man's mistress. He mentally absolved himself of all reproach. The blame lay entirely at Zoë's door. From the very first he had wished only to take care of little Zoë. Hadn't he married her to give her the protection of his name? She had chosen to throw off the mantle of his protection. A man who permitted his wife to direct her own course was no man by his lights. One day Zoë would thank him for the means he was forced to employ to keep her safe from her own folly.

Conscious that Zoë was casting another killing look in his
direction,
Rolfe averted his head and gave his attention to the conversation of his companions.

Deputy Tallien and Charles Lagrange were discussing the recent unrest which had swept Paris. Mobs had descended on the Convention, demanding bread and the implementation of the '93 constitution. The Convention had declared that Paris was a city under siege. The army had been called out to restore order. Thousands of
sans-culottes,
the instigators of the riots, had been thrown in prison. The prison populations, mostly
sans-culottes
and former supporters of Robespierre, were terrified, and with good reason.

In the provinces, particularly in the south, a new wave of Terror had broken out. The White Terror it had come to be called. Fanatical extremists of the Right, avowed Royalists, were exacting a terrible retribution on those who had carried out Robespierre's policies. Groups of assassins belonging to diverse secret societies were hunting down their former persecutors and summarily executing them. In several towns, hundreds of prisoners were massacred in their cells or in the courtyards of the prisons. Anarchy was the order of the day, and it was creeping closer to Paris.

"God knows where it will all end," bemoaned Lagrange.

"A little blood-letting was to be expected," said Tallien. "Some good may come of it yet." At Lagrange's pained expression, Tallien laughed. "Look at it this way, Monsieur Lagrange: those White Terrorists are doing the rest of us a favor. They are meting out justice to the rats who have disappeared into their holes. That
Cache-Cache
fellow —the one who tried to murder me? It wouldn't surprise me one whit if his days are numbered. One informer, that's all it takes, and the White Terror will descend like an avalanche on that pack of dogs."

"I presume you are referring to the members of that
sect . . .
I forget the name," drawled Rolfe.

"La Compagnie
," supplied Tallien.

"But what if an innocent man is informed against?" interposed Lagrange. "I say that law and order must prevail. Justice must be seen to be done."

Tallien shrugged philosophically.
"So a few innocent victims pay with their blood.
What of it? It's cheap at the price if France is purged of that
canaille,
that scum of our society."

Lagrange could not disguise his distaste for these sentiments. "Monsieur Ronsard," he said, "you are a foreign diplomat. Your views must be without prejudice. What think you of recent events in France?"

"What I think," said
Rolfe,
"is that Royalists abroad must surely think that the tide is turning in their favor."

"You think that a Royalist army will land in France?" asked Tallien sharply.

Rolfe's attention was momentarily diverted as a young
muscadin
,
a member of the
jeunesse doree,
engaged Zoë in a private
tête-à-tête.
They had moved a little apart from the crush, to one of the window alcoves.