Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  Suddenly she felt embarrassed, unable to meet his eyes any longer. She looked down at her lap. Her dress was ripped and stained with mud. She had no shoes or hat, and the wind blew her hair in wild tangles around her face. She tried to gather it back with her hands, then, giving up, rubbed at a smear of dirt on her skirt.

  He captured her hands with one of his. With the other he tilted her face up until she could no longer avoid his eyes. "I like you looking a bit disheveled, remember? Marry me, Gabrielle."

  A smile trembled on her lips. But the smile faded as it occurred to her that he had yet to tell her he loved her. And then the smile returned as she realized that in a way—his way—he just had.

  Her eyes drank in his face while he waited for her answer. She savored the strong curve of his cheekbone, the firm line of his lips, the throbbing pulse in the lean muscles of his neck.

  She touched the pulse with the tip of one finger. Felt it stop, then start up again, faster. "Yes," she said, and the word, from deep in her throat, came out broken and shaky.

  His eyes warmed and his lips parted, and her fingers fluttered up to capture his smile. He took one of her fingers between his lips, nibbling at it gently once, twice, sucking it deeper into his mouth, then releasing it.

  "Oh, Max," she said on an exhale of breath. She cradled his face with her hands. She kissed his eyes, first one, then the other. She brought her mouth close to his, but let it hover there, allowing the anticipation to build and build until it was like a high-pitched note whining through her blood.

  Even then she didn't kiss him, merely slid her tongue lightly across his lips. His shirt, which had pulled loose at the neck, was twisted half off his shoulder. And she turned to put her lips to the curve of his bare flesh, licking the smooth muscle, tasting him. Her breasts, pressed fiat against his chest, felt the echo of the drumbeat of his heart. Her hands roamed over his body, exploring him inch by slow and careful inch.

  "Gabrielle ..." His voice rumbled against her neck, raising goose bumps on her skin. "I think we'd better stop while we still—"

  A volley of shouts, carried to them by the wind, shattered the quiet. Gabrielle raised her head from where it rested in the crook of his shoulder and looked out across the field. Her eyes opened wide, and a small laugh escaped her lips.

  A group of the villagers had invaded the field, armed with pitchforks, axes, and scythes. One, who must have been the intendant, for he was the only one wearing breeches and a coat, approached the balloon warily. He held a long pitchfork by the end of its handle, making menacing jabs in the air.

  He lunged the pitchfork like a javelin at the monster. The balloon belched, and a stream of gas jetted out with a moaning hiss. Letting out a loud shriek, the man jumped back, dropping his weapon.

  "Merde!" Max exclaimed, trying to scramble to his feet, intent on rescuing the fallen beast.

  But Gabrielle grabbed his waist, holding him back. "Don't be silly, Max. Do you want them to start sticking their pitchforks into you? There must be thirty of them, and besides, it's too late anyway."

  Several of the men had begun to hurl stones at the fluttering, writhing envelope. It groaned and collapsed inward, shrinking. Emboldened, they approached it slowly, and when it showed no signs of counterattacking, they began to slash and hack at it with their scythes and axes.

  "God, I can't watch this." Max moaned. He sat back, bracing his elbows on his bent knees, and buried his head in his arms. "They're killing her."

  "Good riddance," Gabrielle said.

  He flung his head up to scowl at her. "Good riddance? Have you any idea how much in debt I put myself to build that damned aerostat?"

  Gabrielle tried to decide when Max looked his most adorable—when he flashed that devilish, damn-the-world grin, or when, as now, his mouth curled into a sulky pout like a small boy's.

  She kissed him. "I'll marry you anyway," she said. "Rich or poor, I love you, Maximilien de Saint-Just. I always will." And she leaned into him to kiss him again.

  He drew in a ragged breath and put her firmly away from him. "If you want me to wait until we're properly married before making love to you, ma mie, you'd better not come any closer. Because I have only so much willpower and you are pure temptation—Jesu, what are they doing to her now? "

  Gabrielle rose to her knees to look out across the field. The villagers, she saw, had hitched the defeated balloon to a plow horse and were about to drag it in ignominious shame off the field.

  Max was up and storming after them before Gabrielle could stop him. By the time she caught up, he had already felled four men and wounded several others before being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. A short rotund man in a black cassock jumped around the pile of bodies that wrestled on the ground, waving his arms and shouting.

  "Desist, I say. In the name of our savior, I command you to cease this violence at once!" He ended this tirade with a volley of violent sneezes.

  The villagers desisted; Max did not. Filled with tremendous sexual energy he hadn't been able to release through normal means, Max was getting a perverse satisfaction out of pounding flesh with his fists. Two more villagers received bloody noses before he was again subdued.

  He was hauled to his feet and shoved before the man in the black cassock.

  "Are you responsible for the invasion of our village by this heathen beast?" the cure`demanded of Max, pointing a quivering finger at the once great balloon, now withered and ripped and stained with mud.

  One of Max's eyes was already beginning to swell, but he was able to look down the length of his arrogant nose at the cure`. "That, you damned meddling priest, is no heathen beast. It happens to be an agnostic aerostat."

  Gabrielle clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh. The cure`, however, was not amused. He turned his baleful glare on her. She thought he was the ugliest man she'd ever seen. He had big, hanging jowls and a pushed-in nose deformed by taking too much snuff. He resembled one of those pugnacious dogs bred for bear-baiting.

  "This man," the cure` thundered, "is obviously the devil in disguise come to plague and tempt us. And this woman"— he flung a pointing finger at Gabrielle and she jumped in alarm—"is the devil's handmaiden!"

  An angry rumble stirred through the villagers, and one man took a step forward, brandishing his ax.

  "I will have no more viooolence!" the cure` roared, punctuating it with a huge sneeze. The villager stumbled backward, flinging his arm in front of his face to shield himself from the spray.

  Max had jerked free of the hands that held him, and he snatched up the priest by the front of his cassock. He gave him a rough shake, and the fat man's feet twitched above the earth as if he were a chicken that had just had its neck wrung.

  "You'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak about my—" Max stopped in mid-word, and a strange look crossed his face. Gabrielle, worried that in bis maddened state he might do murder, put a restraining hand on her man's arm.

  Max relaxed his grip, letting the priest slide to the ground. He rearranged the folds of the curd's cassock, even brushing off a speck of imaginary dust. "My dear Monsieur le Cure`," he said, summoning forth a truly devilish smile, "you are just the man I need."

  "Need?" the cure` squeaked.

  "Yes." Max drew Gabrielle into his arms. "I need you to marry me to this woman."

  "Now?" Gabrielle exclaimed.

  The cure` sneezed; it was an awesome sound. "I ... many?"

  "Father?" one of the villagers interjected.

  "Shut up!" the cure` barked.

  "Now," Max said to Gabrielle. "Before you change your mind."

  The cure` pushed a tremendous snort out of his deformed nose. "Impossible. Where's the contract, eh? Have the banns been posted? I'll need ten days at least to complete the necessary paperwork."

  Max's eyelids slitted closed and his voice dropped to a soft, silken purr. "Perhaps, Father, I should put it in terms you can better understand. Unless I am married to this woman this afternoon, a grave sin will be com
mitted this night." "

  The cure` paled and licked his thick lips. "Surely you can't mean . . . sin?"

  "Sin. Fornication, to be precise."

  A strange sound—like the death cheep of a strangled bird-popped out of Gabrielle's mouth. Red with mortification, she glared at her husband-to-be, trying to tell him with her eyes just what she would do to him for this latest humiliation when next they were alone together.

  But she also had to admit he spoke the truth. For, married or not, she would lie with Maximilien de Saint-Just this night.

  "The consequences will be on your head," Max said to the priest. Then he flashed his sudden, mocking smile. "On the other hand, if you marry us within the hour, I'll pay you a hundred livres."

  The cure` flung out his arms and bellowed "Begone with you!" so loudly that a flock of pigeons in the nearby pines was scattered into flight. Gabrielle wondered if the priest truly thought she and Max were devils and was now attempting to perform an exorcism.

  But he was simply shooing his own flock back to the village. "Leave the heathen beast where it is," he ordered as the field slowly emptied, although one or two of the men glared back over their shoulders.

  In the ensuing silence the cure` sneezed, then cleared his throat. "A man of the cloth cannot be bribed," he admonished sternly. "However, a charitable donation to the church is always welcome." He gave his squashed nose a vigorous rub. "I am Father Etienne Benoit, cure` to the village of Chenaie-sur-Seine. And you are Monsieur ..."

  "Saint-Just."

  "Surely not the comte de Saint-Just? You are far too young. You are, perhaps, the comte's son?"

  Max looked at Gabrielle. His face tightened, and the old bitter cynicism glinted in his eyes. "Yes, I'm the comte's son. His bastard son," he said harshly, as if daring her to love him still, now that she knew his shame.

  "Ah," the cure` said, imbuing an entire society's contempt for illegitimacy into that one sound.

  But Gabrielle didn't care how Max came to be born. She believed he had been put on this earth for her to love, and she told him so by taking his hand and giving him the same sweet smile she gave to Dominique when he was hurt and needed comforting.

  For a moment Max just stood there, as stiff and unyielding as a stone wall. Then she felt him sigh, and the smile he gave back to her reached all the way to his dark gray eyes—eyes that were for once free of all emotion but happiness.

  Father Benoit had looked from Gabrielle to Max and back to Gabrielle again. "And is this marriage your wish as well, my daughter?" he asked, his voice suddenly kind.

  Gabrielle opened her mouth, but her throat froze and for a moment nothing could come out. "Y-yes," she finally stuttered.

  The cure` sneezed. "Then it shall be done."

  ❧

  It was an old church.

  It smelled of musty pews and mildewed missals. Streams of sunlight pushed through the narrow windows that lined the nave, showing the dust motes dancing in the air. A path was worn in the stone floor leading up to the altar, testimony to the many feet that had over the years come forward to receive the body of Christ.

  Father Benoit left them before the communion railing and disappeared into the sacristy. Soon a volley of violent sneezes echoed throughout the church as he indulged his snuff habit.

  Max slipped an arm around Gabrielle's waist and planted a kiss on her cheekbone. Her body responded immediately, seeming to melt into him like snow on a hot hearth.

  She pushed halfheartedly against his chest. "Max, we are in a church."

  His hand moved up her waist to cup her breast. "Uh-huh," he mumbled as his lips trailed up into her hair and he rubbed her nipple through the stiff material of her bodice. "In church. About to be married."

  She groaned, turning her head so that he could lick her ear. "That's no excuse."

  "I don't need an excuse."

  "Ahem!"

  Gabrielle jerked out of Max's arms, blushing furiously under the curd's stern eye.

  Father Benoit straightened the sacramental stole around his thick neck as he waddled up to them. "I believe a session in the confessional would be in order," he said.

  Gabrielle's blush deepened, and Max made a face.

  "Before receiving any of the sacraments, particularly the sacrament of marriage," the cure` intoned, wagging a fat finger under Max's nose, "your soul must be in a state of grace. Can you assure me, my son, that your soul is washed clean of all sin?"

  "No," Max said with such haughtiness that Gabrielle made a surreptitious sign of the cross to ward off any stray lightning bolts.

  The priest tsked and shook his head. "The worst sin of all, my son, is pride."

  Max held the priest's eyes for a long moment before looking down at his bare feet. The priest looked down as well, then back up to Max, his eyebrows raised.

  "It's a long story," Max said.

  The cure's jowls twitched. "I imagine so. Don't bother to relate it to me, however." He looked at Gabrielle and gestured at the confessional box. "Shall we proceed, my child?"

  "That didn't take long," Max said to her when she emerged a few moments later.

  "I didn't have much to say," she told him smugly. And then she blushed, for her only sins this last week had been thoughts of committing lewd and lascivious behavior with him.

  Max was in the confessional for a long time. Gabrielle paced back and forth down the nave trying not to think, for if she pondered too much about this crazy, impulsive thing she was about to do, she would never go through with it.

  She shouldn't have even gone to the Jardin de Plantes this morning. She'd only done so because Max had asked her so sweetly, and she couldn't bear the thought of disappointing him. But it had been a terrible risk to show her face at such a public event. And then she had made matters worse by drawing everyone's attention to her by climbing into the aerostat with Max. Everyone saw her, and she could have so easily been recognized—

  Louvois . . . Her chest felt tight with sudden fear. Louvois himself could have been there!

  Mere de Dieu, what was she thinking? She could never marry Max. If they weren't already, all of Paris would soon be talking about the mad scientist Saint-Just and his crazy experiments with balloons filled with inflammable air. And she understood Max well enough by now to know he enjoyed his notoriety. He was also the kind of man who'd want to parade around the Palais Royal with his new wife on his arm. How could she explain to him that their marriage must be kept a secret, that no one must know of her? How could she tell him that without telling him everything? And if she told him everything, what would he-Don 't think about it. Don't—

  "Think about something else," she whispered aloud. Sighing, she clutched her hands together in nervousness and felt the sharp edge of the sapphire ring. For a moment the sight of it, and the memories it evoked, were almost her undoing.

  Quickly she pulled the ring off her finger and put it in the pocket of her skirt.

  She stared at the closed doors of the confessional box. What was taking him so long? Surely even a rake like Max couldn't have that many sins on his conscience.

  A soft smile transformed her face. He might be a rake, but he was an adorable one. I'm a bastard and I've no desire to be reformed, he had warned her the night they went out to look at the stars. Her smile faded. Would marriage reform Max? She doubted it. He was a man who enjoyed women and the pleasure they could bring him. He might fancy himself in love with her now, but how long would it be before he came to regret this day's impulsiveness? I'll lie to you and I'll probably use you, he had said, and I'll most definitely end up hurting you—

  The door to the wooden box squeaked open and Max emerged. He started to smile, and then he saw her face and his lips tightened and his heavy lids dropped to obscure his eyes.

  "Are you regretting your answer already, Gabrielle? The door is right back there. You are free to use it."

  She flung her head up, challenging him. "Are you, perhaps, regretting the question?"

  She waited, bu
t Max said nothing. The church was so silent she could hear the rustle of bats in the eaves. Neither of them made a move toward the door.

  She wondered what he really felt for her. Surely it was love that had brought him to this church, to this moment? "What's happened to the priest?" she finally asked when she could no longer bear the silence.

  He produced a smile. His mocking one.

  "He insisted I enumerate all my sins and so I did. I fear he now needs a few minutes to recover from the shock."

  Gabrielle laughed, remembering suddenly all the many reasons why she loved him. "Oh, Max, you are incorri—"

  Just then the cure` stumbled out of his side of the confessional box. His face was as white as the lawn of his stole, and he looked at Max as if he expected him to sprout horns and a pair of cloven hooves at any moment. "We will need . . ."he started to say, but his voice shook so badly he had to begin over again. "We will need two witnesses."

  Max went outside and came back with two of the villagers, both with badly battered faces. They must have borne no grudge against him, however, for they grinned and slapped his back before slipping into a nearby pew.

  To Gabrielle, the wedding Mass seemed interminable. She knelt beside Max before the altar, her hand in his, and let the drone of the priest's voice—interrupted by an occasional sneeze—wash over her. She slanted a look at Max. His head was bent, his eyes half shut, and she thought he was praying until she realized he was leering down the low-cut bodice of her dress. She smiled to herself as he began to caress the inside of her wrist in slow, sensuous circles. Only minutes from absolution and already he was sinning.

  It all seemed so unreal, as if it were happening to someone else and she was looking down on it all from a great height the way she had looked down on the world as she floated across the sky in the balloon. She tried not to think of how selfish she was being—to wed Max when she could only bring him tragedy and pain. It would have been better to have lain with him in sin, to snatch a few glorious, love-filled nights and then disappear with Dominique into the streets of Paris the way they had disappeared before. But loving Max as she did, how could she hurt him so? No, that was not quite the truth of it, for she would end up hurting him anyway. And as for Dominique, what was she trying to save him from—a childhood of pampered luxury, a future of almost unlimited wealth and power? No, the truth was she hadn't the courage to give up either Max or her son. Not on her own, not without being forced to. Or not until they, discovering the truth, left her ...