Joanna Bourne - The Forbidden Rose

“I will feel strange for a time. Being in love with you is shedding the skin of my soul, as a snake sheds its skin. I feel tender and naked. I would rather not love you, in fact, but I have no choice in the matter.”

“I don’t have any problems at all, loving you. It’s pure pleasure.” He filled another bucket and poured it over himself. This time, she got wet, too, she was so close to him. She cupped her hand to take some of the water that spilled off his body. It was chillingly cold, but she splashed it on her face.

She was disconcerted when he leaned down to nip at her ear and kiss her there, quick and playful.

His teeth, closing on her ear, tightened her skin up, sent a hot pulse of lightning within her, down to her toes.

A little breathless, she said, “Will we live in this house? I can deal with your Madame Cachard, if I must.”

“We’ll live in England, at least at first, since they’re holding a war in France and half the people in Paris know you’re running La Flèche. I’ll buy a place near London. Hampstead, maybe. They’re always after me to work in London. Training. Analysis. I’ll be Head of Section eventually, if I stay—”

“No.”

She felt the sigh he did not allow himself. “Then I won’t,” he said. “There’s enough work in this world for a man that he doesn’t have to go spying. There’s a paper on Celtic languages I’ve been meaning to write, if I ever got the time. I can—”

“I mean, no, you will work as you always have. You will travel about, poking and prying into the affairs of the world, and bring balance to the fate of nations and spin peace out of your own strength. You will do the work you were born to do. I will not make you less than you are.”

His lips and his breath were warm on the top of her head. His hair hung down, just touching her forehead, chilly from being washed. He was entirely motionless. It was like being held by one of the tall stones in Brittany, the menhirs, that mark the hilltops. “You’ll send me off? Let me work?”

“Do you think I want a great lummox like you about and underfoot all day long, every day? I shall breathe a sigh of relief, very secretly, when you go away. Then, in a short time, I will forget how annoying you are and welcome you back with great enthusiasm when you come home.”

“I like the welcoming-home idea. And the enthusiasm part.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his face where his scar would have been. Where it would be, when he went on his travels again. He tasted like harsh soap. It was a masculine flavor but not romantic. She liked it on him. “Think of my enthusiasm, at night, when you are in dangerous places. You will know that I am waiting for you. I shall, of course, take lovers, but I will shove them swiftly out of the house when you arrive. You must pretend not to notice their coattails disappearing around the corner.”

“Right.” His hands were confident and amused, drawing her in. “Good thing I’m not a jealous man.”

“I will make a home for you, Guillaume, not a cage. You will go away always, to your work and your wandering. If you will leave your heart with me, I will care for it like diamonds.”

When Hawker appeared with clothing they were standing, silent. Guillaume was naked and his arms were around her.

“Anybody’d think you don’t have a bed,” Hawker said.

“I am very fond of beds,” she said. “Perhaps if you take me to one I will show you my toenails. I have gilded them for you. Although I believe there are affairs of state to discuss in the kitchen.”

“Damn affairs of state.” Guillaume carried her away upstairs.

RUMOR ENTERED THE HOUSE IN THE MARAIS WITH the dawn and returned again and again all day. Somehow everyone in Paris knew Robespierre would condemn his enemies in the Convention. English spies took a great and immediate interest in this.

Marguerite worked beside Althea, cooking omelets, toasting bread, and slicing ham for men and women who came to the kitchen and spoke, very fast, very excitedly, to Carruthers and ate what was put before them and departed.

By late afternoon, the kitchen held seven men and five women. That was too many to sit down. Three men and Hawker stood with their backs to the wall. The woman Carruthers—Madame Cochard—was at the head of the table, as she had been for some hours, collecting reports.

“. . . shouted him down when he tried to speak. Half the deputies are out for his head. Robespierre was so angry he lost his voice. The Convention is in an uproar.”

“Somebody said, ‘The blood of Danton is choking him.’ ”

“That’s a good one. That’s good.”

“The chairman kept pounding the gavel. Keeping Robespierre from saying anything. From naming any more counter-revolutionaries.”

Althea poured new coffee into cups and laid them down. “They’re all in this. Everyone Doyle warned. Both the Left and the Right.”

A woman, small and dark as a Gypsy, said, “They planned last night. A dozen of them met in the Tuileries.” She turned in her chair to look behind her, to Guillaume. “Fouché was brandishing that forgery of yours like he thought it up himself. That was well done. Well done.”

Carruthers narrowed her eyes at Guillaume. “Next time you decide to topple the government of France,” there was an edge to her voice, “warn me.”

Laughter broke out around the room.

Carruthers lifted her hand. Silence fell. “The tumbrels were stopped by a mob in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. That’s the temper of the streets. Did they get the prisoners free? Does anyone know?”

Around the table, head shakes. Hawker spoke up. “The mob was pushed back. Horses. Guns. The tumbrels went through.”

Silence for a moment. “Damn,” from one man.

“That’ll be the last of them.”

“The mob has spoken. We’re done with this killing.” Carruthers said, “The Garde Nationale’s ordered to report to the Place de Grève. Robespierre’s been taken to the Luxembourg Prison. Anything else?”

A square, nondescript man, dressed like a storekeeper, spoke up from beside the door. “The prison turned him away. He’s at the mayor’s office on Quai des Orfèvres with troops around him. The streets say the Garde’s going to march on the Convention.”

“Then I need you there, at the Convention. Gaspard—”

On the other side of the room, a man nodded.

“To the mayor’s office. The rest of you make a round of the Section offices. Everything depends on whether Robespierre can get the Sections behind him. Stay in pairs. If there’s fighting, try not to get your heads blown off.”

They laughed. Men and women finished coffee in a single swallow, grabbed a plum from the bowl on the table, and left. There was a quiet, competent recklessness about them, as if they could be sent into hell to fetch one particular piece of charcoal from the furnaces and they’d make a good job of it.

Hawker clattered dishes, carrying them to the scullery. “There are waiters in Paris who could clear this off and no one would see them.” Carruthers was making notes on the pages she’d spread in the clear spaces of the table. “They’d be invisible.”

“I could pick their pockets while they were doing it.” The rattling ceased. He wrapped an imaginary apron around his middle and became the serving boy in a café, deft, practiced, silent. They were chameleons, these Englishmen.

Guillaume was the most changeable of them all. He’d been out since early morning, gathering facts and rumors. He wore the crumpled blue smock of a market laborer. Althea had cut his hair short and rubbed in powdered ash. He was gray-haired now. The scar was gone. Every long crease of his face was a separate and deep seam. His eyes hid in a network of wrinkles. She did not know how he managed that.

She had watched him leave this morning to walk the streets of the city. He changed, even as the porter opened the gate. He became another man. Abruptly, between one step and the next, there was something wrong about his left shoulder and arm, as if they had been pasted together hastily and jiggled before the parts dried. He looked clumsy. He did not look in the least like Guillaume LeBreton.

It could not be easy for a man to play so many parts, so long. In the home that she would make for him, he would be only Guillaume. Only himself.

Guillaume set his empty cup in Hawker’s hands. “I’ll go back to the stalls of Les Halles. The market men know what’s happening, if anyone does, and know it first.”

“Far be it from me,” Carruthers said, “to give orders to an Independent Agent, but I could use you here, winnowing reports. I have plenty of eyes and ears walking around. I’ll send the boy out to the markets,” she looked at Hawker, “and see what he can drag back for me.”

“Good enough. I’ll—”

The door pushed open. A young man came in, moving quickly. He was sixteen or seventeen, pale-haired, with a scholar’s face. His eyes skipped from one person to another, lingered on Hawker, then went back to Carruthers. “The man I was watching . . .”

“Victor de Fleurignac.” Carruthers hooked a chair with her foot and scooted it back for him to sit in. “You can talk. And you don’t have to kill Hawker after all. He’s mine now.” She gave a tight smile. “We’re all relieved. What about Victor de Fleurignac?”

“Fouché visited just after nine this morning. Stayed twenty minutes. Three messengers came between ten o’clock and noon. Then nothing. An hour ago the old man showed up. The older de Fleurignac. The marquis. He opened the door with a key and let himself in. He hadn’t come out when I left.”

DOYLE COUNTED DOZENS OF MEN OUT ON THE streets all walking fast, going different directions. There were no carriages, no carts, no wagons. No women but the one walking at his side. Everyone expected fighting to break out when troops from the Convention came to arrest Robespierre. Maybe a good, rousing riot.