Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  The painting on the fan was a pastoral scene, a shepherdess with her cavorting flock. He made a face at it and tossed the fan aside. "I thought that while I'm here I might as well buy something," he said casually. "A gift. For my mistress."

  Gabrielle stood up, her happiness slowly disappearing like smoke out an open window. She should have known he would have a mistress. He probably had hundreds of them. "If you give me an idea of her tastes," she said stiffly, "perhaps I can help you."

  "She has expensive tastes, of course. What woman doesn't?" Another smile, once again mocking. "It should be something intimate, I think, but not too extravagant. I intend to give it to her tonight . . ." He paused, and his dark gray eyes fastened onto Gabrielle's. "After I tell her goodbye."

  There was no mistaking his meaning, not in his words and not in his eyes. Gabrielle stood before him, feeling joy and terror, excitement and guilt. She realized that one word, one movement on her part, would give him an answer. Yes or no, stay or go.

  Unsure, she did nothing.

  There was a large glass case resting on the counter in back of the shop. It contained small valuable items, such as snuffboxes, cameos, and jewelry. He went to it and leaned over to examine its contents. Gabrielle made a small movement as if to stop him, barely quelling it in time.

  "Perhaps a ring," he said, turning, and Gabrielle's breath caught in her throat.

  For the ring, the sapphire ring that she had sold to Simon Prion four years ago, the ring that a duc's son had once placed on her finger, still rested on the velvet lining of the case. Simon had many times tried to give it back to her, but she had always refused. She would redeem it, she had said with pride, when she had worked off her debt.

  But there were other rings for sale, she told herself. Prettier, more valuable.

  Max had turned back to the case. "This one," he said, and pointed to a ring—a ruby ring. Gabrielle slowly let out her breath.

  She took a small key from the desk and unlocked the case. Her fingers were shaking so badly she was sure he would notice.

  He slipped the ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand. He blew on the jewel, rubbed it with the lace at his cuff, then held his hand out to study it.

  "What do you think?"

  Gabrielle swallowed and forced a smile. "It's very pretty, monsieur . . . and only five hundred livres."

  "I don't know." He looked at the ring again, then set it aside. "I've never fancied rubies."

  His eyes roamed slowly over the contents of the case. Gabrielle's hands pressed so hard onto the countertop that her knuckles whitened.

  He picked up one of a pair of earrings, a cluster of pearls dangling from a tiny gold chain. He regarded it for a moment, glanced at her, then tossed it back into the case. He ran his fingers over the enameled top of a snuffbox, fondled a diamond-chip bracelet, picked up a ring. Her ring.

  Gabrielle visibly stiffened. He looked at her again, smiled.

  He held the ring up to the light, and the sun shining through the window bounced off the facets of the sapphire, making rainbow reflections on the wall.

  "Perhaps I'll take this one."

  "No!" Gabrielle exclaimed on a hiss of breath.

  He stared at her. "Why not? Don't you like it?"

  "No . . . yes." She snatched it from his hand. "It isn't for sale."

  He raised one dark brow, challenging her. "Then why display it?"

  Gabrielle shrugged with feigned indifference. "You'll have to ask Monsieur Prion." She ran her tongue over her dry lips. "I really do prefer the ruby myself, monsieur . . . Max."

  He smiled slowly. Then his heavy lids lowered over his eyes until they were almost shut. "Do you? I wouldn't have thought it. Sapphires seem more your style. That one in particular. Did you notice, it matches the color of your eyes."

  Gabrielle shrugged again, clutching the ring tighter in her fist. "I really hadn't noticed."

  He reached into the deep pocket of his velvet coat and pulled out a heavy purse. "I'll have the ruby then. Since the sapphire isn't for sale."

  He dumped out a handful of gold coins, stacking them in a pile on the counter with those long brown fingers. She remembered the rough feel of them brushing her face and again felt the chills rippling down her spine.

  "Shall I . . ." She cleared her throat. "Shall I wrap the ring for you, monsieur?"

  "That won't be necessary." He picked it up and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

  "Then I owe you ten livres in change, monsieur," Gabrielle said, pleased to hear her voice sounding so brisk and businesslike.

  She left the counter, going to the desk where Simon kept the strongbox. But when she went to open the drawer to get the key, she realized she was still clutching Martin's ring tightly in her fist. She set it down carefully, next to the charcoal stick and the caricature. The ring had left small indentations in her palm.

  Max had followed her over to the desk to stand close beside her. His presence seemed to fill the shop, and with every breath she took the tangy, masculine scent of him filled her head. She could feel his hooded eyes watching her.

  Her hands trembled as she opened the strongbox and counted out ten livres. Without looking up, she held the money out to him. His fingers brushed hers as he took the coins, and the muscles low in Gabrielle's stomach tightened and her breath caught.

  Dieu, she thought. What is there about him that does this to me?

  "Gabrielle . . ."

  She sighed. Looking up, she searched his face. It was relaxed, smiling.

  "Tomorrow is Sunday. Will you come with me to the Jardin des Plantes? I want to show you another aerostat that I'm building. A full-sized one." His lips twitched. "I promise I won't let it blow up in your face."

  "Well ... I don't think ... My son. I must take him to Mass."

  "After Mass then. We'll bring the boy with us. He'll love the Jardin des Plantes." His voice took on the silky purr that seemed to imbue even the simplest words with a deep, significant meaning. "Say yes, Gabrielle. Please."

  Her face broke into a smile and her heart soared.

  "Yes," she said.

  ❧

  "Maman!" Dominique cried, bursting into the shop a few minutes behind the departing figure of Maximilien de Saint-Just. "I rolled the hoop all the way to the Place du Carrousel. There was a bear there. A dancing bear! I rode on its back."

  Agnes laughed at the appalled look on Gabrielle's face. "It was a very old bear. And toothless, too. Look," she said, unwrapping a small package bound with twine. "We stopped by Madame Tussard's. I got us some new fichus." She held up one of the thin muslin kerchiefs. "See. She was practically giving them away."

  Gabrielle exclaimed over Agnes's bargain. "I can wear it tomorrow," she said, "When I go—when I go to Mass."

  Agnes's eyes opened wide. "Ah-hah! So he's going to be in church tomorrow, is he?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Agnes. Unlike you, I go to church to worship our savior, not to ogle the neighborhood rakes."

  Agnes laughed. "Since when do the neighborhood rakes go to Mass? And you aren't going to change the subject that easily, Gabrielle. I happen to remember a little talk we had the other night . . ."

  Bored with this conversation, Dominique drifted to the back of the shop. He burrowed under the rack of coats, pretending to be a mouse. But since Monsieur Simon wasn't there to chase him out with a broom, this game soon palled. He saw that there was some paper and a charcoal stick on the desk and thought he might draw a picture of the bear so Maman could see how brave he was to ride it, for it had been a very big bear.

  He was reaching for the charcoal stick when he saw a shiny blue rock in a ring. He snatched this prize up eagerly. He had started collecting rocks that week. Monsieur Simon had given him a round, smooth one that was good for skipping across the pond in the Tuileries, and yesterday he had found a red one with yellow stripes. He had collected a few more this morning in the garden, but this blue one was the prettiest yet. He dropped it into his poc
ket with the others.

  Dominique's stomach rumbled. How long would it be before dinner? He ambled over to his mother, who was holding her new fichu up to the light of the window, examining the stitching.

  "We'll have to dress your hair for Mass tomorrow morning," Agnes was saying, her brown eyes twinkling mischievously. "We'll crimp it with the iron and perhaps lighten it with a bit of flour . . ."

  Dominique stared up at his mother's preoccupied face. "Maman, may I have some bread and jam?"

  "Of course, petit," Gabrielle replied absently, and Dominique dashed into the kitchen before she could change her mind.

  Gabrielle cut off Agnes's teasing suggestions as to which dress she should wear to church tomorrow, saying she wanted to straighten the shop before Simon returned. She locked the strongbox and replaced it in the desk. She picked up the drawing she had made, smiling at the memory of Max's teasing voice and mocking smile. Folding the paper in half, she stuffed it into the pocket of her skirt. Then her smile faded.

  Hadn't she set Martin's ring down here?

  She searched the row of cubbyholes along the top of the desk, then bent over to scan the floor. She unlocked the strongbox and looked through the coins and bank notes. She shut her eyes.

  She could picture herself walking to the desk, Max beside her. Hadn't she set the ring down then, beside the caricature and charcoal stick? No, she must have put it back in the case. She hurried over to the counter—

  "Why, the thieving bastard!" Gabrielle cried.

  Agnes, on her way back to the kitchen, whirled around. "What's happened?"

  "He's stolen it! My ring."

  "Which ring?"

  "My ring."

  Agnes flew over to the case to see for herself. She had heard at least a dozen times Simon's strange story of the day Gabrielle had come into his shop to pawn a sapphire ring.

  "Well!" she huffed. "That'll teach you to leave it lying about where just anyone can steal it. How could you allow this to happen?"

  "I didn't allow it to happen. That—that wretch plucked it right out from under my nose." My stupid, infatuated nose, she thought, feeling a tight ache in her chest.

  "What wretch?" asked Agnes. "Who stole it?"

  "A man," Gabrielle hedged, unable to admit the awful truth of her gullibility, even to herself.

  Agnes waved her hand as if shooing away a bothersome fly. "Oh, of course. A man. Well, what could be easier? We'll simply search all of Paris for a man, and when we And one we'll summon the gendarmes and demand they arrest him for a thief."

  "I know who he is," Gabrielle said between clenched teeth. "His name is Maximilien de Saint-Just. He's that mad, insufferably arrogant scientist who lives above the Cafe de Foy. He came in here to ... to buy a gift for one of his light-of-loves and he walked out with my ring."

  Agnes glanced again at the glass case. "Oh, but this is awful, Gabrielle. Think of Monsieur Simon, how hurt he's going to be when he hears of it. You know how much that ring means to him."

  Gabrielle felt a stab of guilt. She hadn't thought at all of Simon. She'd been too busy wondering why Maximilien de Saint-Just had taken her ring. He didn't strike her as a common thief. Was it possible he had recognized the ring as once belonging to the duchesse de Nevers? She prayed to God that was not the case, for if it was, she and Dominique were already doomed.

  No, no, he'd only fancied it—hadn't he admitted as much? And since she wouldn't sell it, he had simply taken it. He wanted to give it to one of his women. She imagined a beautiful courtesan with expensive tastes wearing the sapphire ring, perhaps to a tout or ball in the ducal palace, and someone—someone who knew the noble family Nevers, who had once seen the ring on the old duchesse's finger—recognizing, exclaiming, pointing it out. And Louvois would hear of it; his spies were everywhere. He would question the courtesan, and then he would question Maximilien de Saint-Just, and then-She would have to get it back. Get it back this instant or take Dominique and disappear. Leave Simon and Agnes and her home here above the pawnshop in the Palais Royal and start running again.

  "I must get it back," she said aloud, desperation making her voice fierce and hard.

  Agnes gave her a strange look. "Gabrielle . . . how ever are you going to get it back?"

  "He stole it from me. I'm going to steal it back."

  Agnes snorted. "You steal? This I should like to see."

  "I've stolen before. When I had to. But this time it won't really be stealing. I'll merely be recovering my own—or rather, Simon's—property."

  "This time! By the wounds of Saint Sebastien, do you mean to tell me you really have stolen before?" Agnes looked astounded. It had always amused Gabrielle that Agnes believed she possessed virtue something on the order of the saints Agnes frequently called upon.

  "Don't curse ... I have a plan," Gabrielle said.

  Agnes rolled her eyes in mock horror.

  "It's very simple," Gabrielle explained. "We'll watch his apartment this afternoon and the next time he leaves, you'll waylay him and borrow the key—"

  "Borrow!"

  "Pick the key out of his pocket, damn you . . . Then you give the key to me and I'll run up and get the ring." Unless he takes it with him. Dieu, she thought, what if he takes it with him?

  "I don't like it," Agnes said.

  "I'm not asking you to like it and, besides, what's wrong with it?"

  "What if he catches me trying to pick his pocket? I could wind up at the whipping post in the Place de la Greve." Agnes spread her fingers in front of her face, flexing them and frowning. "I haven't had much practice lately."

  Gabrielle gave her a skeptical look.

  Placing her hand over her heart, Agnes made her eyes look round and innocent. "I swear by my virginity—"

  "What kind of a lying oath is that?"

  "May a brace of devils broil me over an open pit if I've stolen so much as a single sou since that day I saved your ungrateful life."

  Gabrielle seized the girl's hands. "Then you'll do it for me, Agnes?"

  Agnes's lips quirked up into a mischievous smile. "Will I do it? By Saint Bartholomew's tit, I wouldn't miss this for the world—" Her eyes suddenly opened wide and her mouth fell open. "This thief of yours, he wouldn't by any chance be the man who's managed to put you into such a fever these last two days?"

  Gabrielle assumed a mystified look. "Really, Agnes, I haven't any idea what you're talking about. I've never felt better."

  ❧

  Gabrielle hovered around the newspaper vendor across from the Cafe de Foy, pretending to be engrossed in a pamphlet expounding the virtues of peasant life. Every few seconds she peeked over the row of papers displayed for sale—clipped with clothespins on a long string—to study the entrance to Maximilien de Saint-Just's apartment.

  She was so tense that when he finally did come out she almost yelped aloud with the shock of it. She whirled around, bumping into Agnes, who hovered at her elbow.

  ''There he is," she said breathlessly.

  Agnes stood on tiptoe to peer over the string of papers. "Jesu. You forgot to tell me he is such a handsome devil. I have a better idea. Instead of picking his pocket, why don't I go with him up to his rooms? Then I can search for the ring afterward, while he's asleep."

  Gabrielle shoved her in the small of the back. "Quit acting like a Saint-Denis whore. Hurry up. He's getting away."

  Agnes fluffed her short, wispy curls and loosened her fichu, exposing an expanse of white bosom that made Gabrielle feel a decided twinge of envy. Then Agnes picked up the basket at her feet—it was filled with withered violet posies—and joined the flow of traffic in front of the Cafe de Foy, her hips swaying saucily.

  Max was walking fast, a look of intense concentration on his face. When Agnes was but a few feet away from him, she turned abruptly and took two steps backward while gesticulating with her fist and shouting at a mysterious someone behind her, calling him a cuckoldy, cow-hearted mongrel-Max slammed into her.

  The basket flew out of Agnes's ar
ms, dumping posies into the dirt. Agnes began to wail.

  "Ow! And look what you've done, you gouty lummox. Who taught you to walk, a blind man with no feet? You've ruined my flowers, you cursed son of a poxed whore!"

  "A thousand pardons, mademoiselle," Max said politely as he bent to gather the posies back into the basket.

  "And may a thousand devils carry you off to hell, you're trampling all over them with your big feet!" Agnes exclaimed. She jerked the basket out of his hands, lurching into him.

  Max steadied her. "And I think you're a little drunk," he said, laughing and casting an appreciative eye at the girl's heaving and half-bare breasts.

  "I most certainly am not!" Agnes huffed with indignation, her bosom swelling provocatively.

  Then she spoiled the effect by belching and swiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. She began to sidle away from him. Max watched her a moment, his face relaxed with amusement, before he shook his head and, turning, went on his way.

  Gabrielle had moved to a nearby bench in the gardens to wait for Agnes because the newspaper vendor had started to eye her suspiciously. She felt sick with disappointment. Why couldn't she fall in love with a simple man—a farmer or a shopkeeper? Instead first she had chosen Martin de Nevers, a duc's only son and heir to one of the most powerful houses in the kingdom. And now this Maximilien de Saint-Just . . . At best he was a thief. And at worst-She almost shouted with relief at the sight of Agnes running through the trees.

  Agnes pressed a heavy black key into Gabrielle's hand. "Here it is," she said breathlessly, glancing back over her shoulder. "I think he suspects something."

  "Why should he suspect anything?"

  "I don't know ..." Agnes gave her a worried look. "Don't dawdle, Gabrielle. Get the ring and get out. He could return at any moment and, well, he has a look about him, around the eyes. I think he's a man who could be very, very dangerous if crossed."

  Gabrielle nodded once and swallowed hard. "You should go back to the shop, Agnes, in case Simon and Dominique come back early and wonder where we are." She had gotten them out of the way that afternoon by sending them off with a pair of poles to do some fishing at the river, ushering them quickly out the door after dinner before Simon could notice the empty space in the jewelry case.