The English Heiress (25 page)

“Sorry for what?” Leonie asked.

“I do not seem to be very good at keeping my promises to you. I said I would get you safely to England. Instead, we seem to be trapped here where God alone knows what will happen next.”

Leonie looked at him for a moment and then smiled. “But the truth is that I don’t mind a bit. I am even looking forward to setting up a business. Will you let me help serve in the shop, Roger?”

“Serve in the shop?” he said in a horrified voice. “The heiress of Stour serve in a shop?”

“But what will I do?” Leonie asked reasonably. “I will go demented if I must sit in one small room all day. After all, you will be serving in a shop.”

“A man is in a different situation,” Roger replied reprovingly. “Your reputation, if someone—” As he said it, he realized how ridiculous it was and began to laugh. “Habits die hard,” he gasped. “Neither you nor I will have a shred of reputation left if any of this gets out. Of course you may serve in the shop, my dear, if you wish to do so.”

She hugged his arm in appreciation, and when they had obtained the direction of the place from Lefranc and found it, she examined both the shop and the rooms above with great interest. There was even a garden at the back. Roger allowed that the place would be suitable, particularly as it seemed to be furnished, but he was frowning and to Leonie’s questions replied that he did not see how he could afford to pay the rent for a whole house. He could see Leonie was disappointed and years of unhappy memories of the result of refusing a woman anything made him cold. Leonie, however, only shrugged.

“Oh well, perhaps the Aunays will permit you to work in our chamber. We will manage somehow.”

Roger had been about to say that what they needed to find was a way out of Paris, not a place for him to work, but he was so grateful that Leonie neither made a furious scene nor whined nor wept that instead he determined she should have what she wanted. If he had to, he would go Fouché again. He said nothing to Leonie, however, not wishing that she should be disappointed again if he could not contrive to rent the place. Her slightly dejected appearance served a good purpose. Lefranc clucked his tongue after one look at her.

“It seems the place is not suitable to you, Saintaire?” he asked.

“It is suitable, but I am afraid you overestimate my resources, Citizen Lefranc. I cannot see how it would be possible for me to pay the rent on a whole house. It will take time to build up custom—no one knows me here in Paris.”

“No, no.” Lefranc waved such matters away. “We have no gunsmith in the Section, and wish to keep you here. If the club recommends you, you will have business enough. Also, the premises belong to the Section. The fool of a tailor who held them before was a conspiring royalist.” He said the words as if he had been reporting that the tradesman murdered small children and drank their blood. “He will be executed and the property confiscated. I am sure Citizen Brissot would make a special arrangement for so ardent a patriot as you, who gave up his stock in trade for the good of the nation and came himself to serve her in her hour of peril.”

“I would not like to accept special favors for what I did,” Roger said stiffly.

It was very distasteful to him to benefit from the deceptions in which he had engaged. It was one thing to do and say what was necessary to save Leonie’s life and his own. It was an entirely different thing to reap material benefit from such lies. Roger did not stop to realize that such seemingly noble behavior would only confirm Lefranc’s mistaken conviction that he was a passionate republican, but that was the effect his statement had. Lefranc again assured Roger that all matters would be arranged to suit him, perhaps a rental scaled upward so that he would have time to establish himself and the financial burden would match his income. Roger was about to protest again when Leonie tugged at him.

“Roger,” she said sharply, slurring her words to hide her accent, “don’t be a fool. The place is perfect. If you feel you owe the Section something, you can always pay more than the rent when you can afford it. Meanwhile, you can begin to work, and I am sure France needs gunsmiths now.”

After that there was nothing more Roger could say. He agreed to terms with Lefranc and promised to return to complete the formal arrangements the next day. However, he was thoroughly angry with Leonie. He had intended to get the shop, using his first statement as a bargaining point, but paying a fair rent. Leonie had not given him a chance. Women either got their way or made a man pay for it, he thought bitterly. When they were out of the premises, Roger headed back toward the café but Leonie tugged at his arm.

“I’m tired,” he remarked coldly. “I’ve been walking all day, down to the gate and–”

“We need not go far, but I want to talk in private,” Leonie said. “You are angry. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let you refuse the place after he said it belonged to a conspiring royalist.”

Roger had been about to point out that he realized she liked the house and she could have trusted him to try to satisfy her, but her reason stopped him cold. “Conspiring royalist? What has that to do with accepting a favor proffered on the basis of a lie.”

Now Leonie was confused. She could not imagine what Roger was talking about, and she said so. When he had clarified his thinking to her, she had a very difficult time keeping herself from laughing. “I regret I did not think the matter through,” she said as gravely as she could. “All I could see was that the man was imprisoned, tried and will be executed in this Section and that, perhaps in other places it would not be known. No doubt Lefranc believes you to be an ardent republican. He is sure that if the tailor’s royalist friends—or rather those who knew he was a royalist but did not know him personally—came to the shop, you would report them. I was afraid that if you refused the place, Lefranc might find someone who really would… Have I said something wrong?”

Roger had stopped in his tracks and was staring at Leonie with his mouth slightly ajar. The ideas she had suggested had never crossed his mind. Now that Leonie had stated them, he had to agree that what she said was logical and might well be true. It made him feel much better.

The next day, Roger completed the formalities and paid the very reasonable rent for the first quarter. Remembering the events of the previous night had eliminated any twinges his conscience might have felt. Although he had little patience with the extravagance and stupidity of the king and his court, Roger was coming to hate and despise those who were presently in control of Paris. Thus he was beginning to take considerable pleasure in the idea that he might be able to cheat them. What had sparked this intense feeling was hearing, through Aunay, that there had been a repeat at La Force prison of the massacre carried out at the Abbaye.

The first massacre might have been a result of confusion, lack of preparation or powerlessness on the part of the government. Once the mob was on the move, it could be stopped only by force, and it was plain that the assembly did not trust the present army to a carry out its orders. Thus, what had happened at Abbaye might have been unavoidable, at least in the sense of being unexpected. Young St. Méard had said a deputation from the assembly tried to stop the executions. However, the same excuse could not be given for what had happened at La Force. Whether or not the assembly had initiated the massacres did not matter. They had had a full day to prevent a similar event from taking place and had done nothing. If there was anything Roger could do to save someone from falling into their hands, he would be overjoyed to do it.

They moved the next day, carrying with them a generous supply of food from the larder of the café. Madame Aunay had pressed this upon them, saying it was only a trifle compared with what Roger had saved them by his cleverness. Leonie accepted finally with the most heartfelt thanks she could muster. She should be grateful, she knew, but it had only just occurred to her that she had not the faintest idea what to do with the stuff. The closest she had ever come to cooking was slicing the sausage she and Roger had eaten in the tunnel or handing him the bread and cheese she had found in the café kitchen.

The most pressing problem, Roger said firmly, was setting up his stock and tools, using the counters, hooks and other furnishings left by the tailor. He began to work at this with great energy, making himself too busy to answer Leonie’s questions about helping him and becoming quite short with her. Leonie was surprised at first but then began to feel frightened and guilty. She had pushed Roger into setting up a business, but he was not a gunsmith. He was an English gentleman and, she guessed mistakenly, knew very little about the art. Now he was worried about betraying them by his ignorance.

It was too late for regret, she realized. The best she could do was keep out of his way until he got his worries under control. Then they could think of some way to conceal his lack of knowledge and training until they could escape. She lugged the traveling bag with their clothes up to the living quarters and, to submerge her own uneasiness, began to consider her duties. The first was easy enough. She stripped the bed and opened the window to air the room. After that she hung up their few garments. Then, searching produced sheets and pillowslips, which after some puzzling and trial attempts she got on the bed in a reasonable fashion. Finally, she came down again and went into the kitchen at the back.

Roger heard her, but did not lift his head from what he was doing. His frantic activity had, of course, nothing to do with acting the part of a gunsmith. It had occurred to him during the process of moving that there was no longer any reason for Leonie to share his bed. The house was, like most in Paris, tall and narrow with the shop on the ground floor and the kitchen built out in the back. On the floor above was the tailor’s bedroom and dining parlor, but there was still another floor where the children and servants had slept. Roger knew quite well that he should choose one of the upper rooms as his own. That would be the proper thing to do. Nonetheless, he simply could not do it.

Conscience warred with desire. They were so even a match that all Roger could do was metaphorically stick his head in the sand and drive Leonie to make the choice without any influence or suggestion. When he had snapped at her until she trudged upstairs dragging the heavy cloak bag, he was flayed by guilt. If he had had a chance, he told himself, he had just spoiled it by implying he would be hell to live with. What was wrong with him that he could not make himself agreeable to the only two women he had ever wanted?

That thought started a new train of guilt. What right had he to want a girl like Leonie? She was half his age, literally, and ten times as rich—a great heiress. His scowl was so black, as he fastened a vise to the counter where cloth had been cut, that Leonie tiptoed past close to the wall. She knew she had been wrong, and she did not want to draw notice to herself. Aware of every move she made, almost of every breath she drew, Roger read the guilt in her manner but misinterpreted it. His heart sank sickeningly.

Again war raged in his mind. Desperation urged him to go and know the worst so that he could come to terms with the bitter knowledge and not make himself even more obnoxious. Cowardice whispered that he should wait. Perhaps shame at seeming ungrateful for his protection would make her change her mind when she saw he was unhappy. Appalled at the notion of such crude and disgusting blackmail, Roger promptly dropped what he was doing and ran up the stairs. He went all the way up first, but obviously Leonie had not been there at all. Suppressing the hope that rose so fast it nearly choked him, he came down to the main living floor. The parlor was empty. Biting his lip he walked through to the bedchamber. The first thing he saw was the empty traveling bag, the second was the neatly made bed. That was not final, he told himself to still his leaping heart. There was no reason why Leonie should make a bed for him. She was not a servant, after all. She might expect him to make his own bed. But Roger did not believe his own arguments, and when he saw their clothing hanging side by side in the wardrobe, he knew Leonie assumed they would share the room.

Perversely, conscience immediately gained the upper hand. Roger came down, passed through the shop and came upon Leonie staring bewilderedly at the crane, with its hook and ratchet in the fireplace. “Leonie,” he said more harshly than he intended, “there is no reason we should continue to sleep together. There are rooms—”

She whirled on him, her face flushing, which make her eyes bright as new-minted gold. To scold her for stupidity would be reasonable. However, it was cruel and spiteful, Leonie thought, to withdraw the comfort of his physical presence, to leave her alone to worry and regret what she had done. Angry as she was, Leonie would not plead, but she was not angry enough to want to do without Roger either. Nor was she going to let him have his own stupid way just because he had flown into a temper.

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “I’m sorry to have put us in a dangerous situation, but it can’t be improved by adding to duties for which I am totally untrained and unfit. It’s enough to make one bed and keep two rooms and this kitchen clean. I have no desire to add another bed and room to my burdens.”

“Good God,” Roger exclaimed. “I had never thought of it. It’s not fitting for you to do such things, Leonie. I will have to find a servant for you.”

“Are you mad?” Leonie cried, bitterly hurt at how far he was willing to go to free himself of her and suddenly wondering if the bad temper was only an excuse. Could he already want a different woman? “What would Lefranc think, after you said you were too poor to pay the rent, if he came here and found we had a servant? Not to mention that anyone who employs a servant is just begging to be spied upon and have everything done or said reported to the commissioners of the Section. Can we endure such examination?”