Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  Only when the cup was completely drained did Max let her go. Her face tingled where his fingers had pressed into her skin, and she felt something quiver in her chest. Damn the man. He was a liar, a deceiver, the worst sort of villain imaginable—and all he had to do was touch her, even in anger, and she lost control of her senses.

  He straightened and moved away from the bed, but he didn't leave the room as she half expected him to. It was the first time he had been to see her since she had awakened from her fever two days ago. She should have known he would return only to torment her.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He watched her with that maddeningly arrogant smile of his that made her long for the day when she would once again have the strength to slap it off his face. "I hate you," she said. "What was that vile stuff?"

  The smiled deepened, putting a dimple in one cheek and making him look boyish, making her want to kiss it.

  "You don't want to know," he said. Then his face smoothed and tightened and the heavy lids fell over his eyes. "You should see your face, you little fool. You're still burning up with fever. Do you want to die? Think about Dominique if you refuse to care about yourself!''

  She flung her head up defiantly, which wasn't easy since it was buttressed on all sides by mounds of pillows. "I should think my death would please you well, Monsieur le Vicomte. Then you would be free to sell my son all over again. Or do you no longer need the money now that you've come into your inheritance?''

  He had turned to look out the rain-washed window, but he whipped around again, and she almost cringed at the harsh anger on his face.

  "Sell him! What the hell are you talking about?"

  "You know."

  He crossed the room in two bounds. His powerful hands grasped her arms, half lifting her from the bed. "Oh, no, Gabrielle, I'm not playing any more guessing games with you. A year ago last August you stood up in church and took me as your husband. Two days later you disappeared. Now I'm going to hear the reason why if I have to tum you upside down and shake it out of you."

  Angry tears threatened to choke her so that she had to swallow several times before she could hurl the words right back at him. "Two days later I saw you in the Cafe Monoury selling us to Louvois!"

  "Louvois!"

  He let go of her and she landed back on the bed so hard that she bounced. His face was the epitome of bewildered shock, and if she hadn't seen the proof of his deception with her own eyes she would almost have believed him innocent.

  "Don't pretend you don't know him," she said.

  "I do know him. He heads the smuggling ring. Or did."

  Smuggling . . . ?

  No, she thought, I don't believe this, I can't believe this. He's lying. He has to be lying.

  He had returned to the window. He had his back to the light, facing her, which left his eyes in shadow. His mouth was a tight, straight line. She wished she could see his eyes.

  "You're lying," she said.

  He shrugged. "Why not ask him yourself, since you seem to be on such intimate terms? What precisely is the nature of your acquaintance with him? Or is that one of the many secrets you refuse to tell me, my lady wife?"

  Gabrielle's chest felt tight. She heard her own voice say from a long way away, "You know. You must know. He had to have told you."

  "I beg to differ, but your name never came up in the conversation."

  She shook her head wildly back and forth. "You're lying."

  He made a movement as if collecting himself to walk away.

  Gabrielle struggled to sit up. "No, wait . . . please . . ." She squeezed her eyes shut, summoning all her courage. "He—he works for the duc de Nevers."

  "I know that." Max's voice was flat, detached. "It's how he was able to ran the smuggling. I still don't see what that has to do with you."

  "The ... the duc de Nevers was my husband's—my first husband's—father.''

  He said nothing for the longest time. Then he made a small sound that was part exclamation of surprise and part laughter. It was the spontaneity of that sound, more than anything else, that convinced her of his innocence.

  "My God . . . This Martin fellow of yours was the duc de Nevers's son?" He left the window and came to stand beside the bed. She turned her face away, for now that she could see his eyes, she couldn't bear what they told her.

  His hand cupped her cheek and forced her head back around. "Just who in the name of all that's holy are you, Gabrielle?"

  She told him then. She told him everything. By the time she finished it was the hour of the evening when the lamps were lit, although he had dismissed the servants, allowing the room to grow dark. Her voice spoke to him from the bed, sounding disembodied, while he listened from as far away as he could go and still be in the same room, leaning against a mantel on the opposite wall. She thought he probably felt it, too—that impossible, uncontrollable attraction that had always been between them. And she decided he probably mistrusted it now as much as she did.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" he said when she had at last finished.

  "It's not the sort of thing you blurt out to someone you hardly know."

  "Hardly know! You were my wife. "

  "It wasn't exactly a long betrothal. We met and married within a week. I Wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you on our wed—" She choked over the word. "Our wedding night."

  "That would have been a good time, Gabrielle. It was, I believe, the night I told you I loved you."

  She flinched as if his words were a whip, flaying her. She tried not to cry, but the tears were choking her throat. "I was being hunted. By marrying you I made you hunted as well. I was afraid you would hate me for it. That you'd leave me."

  He gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "So you left me instead."

  The tears were pouring from her eyes, harder than the rain that beat against the window. She thought they would flood the room until she drowned in them. "But I s-saw you with Louvois. He-he gave you money. You s-said you would do anything for m-money."

  Again he laughed bitterly. "Did I say that? One of these days I'm going to learn that not everyone shares my sense of humor."

  He was silent for a long time. Then he sighed. "You saw me with Louvois. And he gave me money, although if you'd waited another second or two you would have seen me give it back to him. I'm not the kind of man to condemn a woman, any woman, to the fate Louvois had planned for you ... If you had trusted me, believed in me, loved me, you would have known that."

  "Oh, God, Max, please ... I do love you. I never once stopped loving you."

  He shook his head. "If you loved me you would never have left me. No matter what you saw, or thought you saw—"

  She held up her hand in an unconscious supplication. "They were trying to take away my son. "

  He pushed away from the mantel and started for the door.

  "Max!"

  He paused with his hand on the latch and turned to look back at her. In the dusk his eyes shone like polished glass. "I loved you, Gabrielle. I thought I would love you forever."

  ❧

  Two weeks later, Gabrielle—still feeling a bit wobbly-leaned against the paddock fence and looked up at her son with anxious eyes. Dominique sat astride an enormous cinnamon-colored horse, his stubby legs barely able to straddle the animal's withers.

  The horse tossed its head and snorted, baring a pair of huge yellow teeth. "Jesu!" Gabrielle exclaimed. "Does he bite?"

  Dominique giggled. "She's a lady horse, Maman. She's very nice. Her name is Marthe."

  Gabrielle thought perhaps she should give Marthe a pat, as a token of friendship. Keeping a careful distance, she leaned far over at the waist and stretched out her hand to rub the horse's gray muzzle. The wind gusted, kicking up the velvet skirts of her new green riding habit and fluttering the tall heron feather in her hat. The feather was dyed bright orange.

  Marthe's cavernous jaws stretched open and she lunged her neck, snapping at the feather.

  Gabrielle shrieked and leaped back
ward. "Jesu and all his saints! He's eating my hat!"

  Dominique cackled with laughter. "She thinks it's a carrot."

  Gabrielle looked around her quickly to be sure no one, in particular a certain someone, had seen her making a fool of herself. She smoothed her skirts, trying to recover her dignity. "Very well, Dominique. You may show me what you've learned now."

  Dominique nudged the horse into the center of the ring. "Are you watching, Maman?" he called out.

  "I'm watching, mon petit," Gabrielle answered faintly, thinking that her life would have been much quieter all the way around if she had given birth to a girl.

  Suddenly the horse broke into a fast trot and Gabrielle dug her nails into her palms to steady her nerves. Dominique and the horse seemed a blur as they sped past her, breaking into a canter around the ring, and Dominique waved. She forced out an encouraging smile and waved back. "Use both hands, cheri.''

  She sucked in a lungful of the crisp winter air. It was a clear day, the sky a chilly, pristine blue, the sun a hazy yellow orb hovering low on the horizon. A snappy wind blew, stripping the trees of the last of their leaves and flattening the surrounding fields of rye. It brought with it the smell of burning wood. They were making charcoal in the nearby forest, burying stacks of wood, setting them alight and covering them with layers of turf.

  During the last two weeks, Gabrielle had felt as if she, too, had been smoldering, just like the charcoal, as she fought with a desperate will to recover from her illness and regain her strength. She forced down tisanes that smelled vile and tasted worse; she drank countless bowls of turnip bouillon and endured mustard baths that left her skin feeling pickled. She made herself walk—from the bed to the water closet and back again.

  The water closet had amazed her. It was all white marble and porcelain and luxurious beyond imagining. But then, so was the whole chateau. The floors were made of precious, fragrant wood and covered with priceless Aubusson carpets.

  The walls were lined with silk and decorated with Gobelins tapestries and paintings by the grand masters—Titian, Rubens, Raphael. Luxury was evident everywhere, even in the small things such as the use of white wax candles instead of tallow, and whitewash on all the outbuildings. Everything proclaimed nobility and tax-exempt privilege—even down to the gold-plated weathercock on the stable roof.

  The chambermaid, whose name was Louise, told her that all this belonged to the comte de Saint-Just, Monsieur Max's father. Now that Monsieur Max was the comte's only surviving son they had managed to set aside their differences. Well, not completely set them aside, mind you, for they still butted heads like a pair of old bulls whenever their paths crossed. Gabrielle had the impression the servants were waiting with bated breath to see what would happen when the comte returned from his hunting trip to discover his rake of a son ensconced in his chateau, and with a suddenly acquired wife and son. Knowing Max's sarcastic tongue, Gabrielle could almost sympathize with the poor old comte.

  Since that first evening of accusation and revelation, Max had not been back to see her. Sitting in a gilded armchair by the window, wrapped in satin quilts, she had watched him cavort with her son around the chateau grounds, teaching him to ride, chasing him across the sweeping green lawns. Even with the window closed against the winter air she could hear their laughter, and she felt a longing that was an actual ache in her chest to be a part of it. She envied her own son, that he was to be given Max's love so unconditionally. But then, he had done nothing to forfeit it.

  Gabrielle knew it was going to be difficult to win back her husband's love. He was not the sort of man to give his heart lightly or easily, yet he had allowed his careful guard to relax long enough to fall in love with her, only to be terribly wounded as a result.

  To Max, who had never loved before, love was a gift to be given without reservation. He couldn't believe it had been possible for her to mistrust him, to leave him, while still loving him. In his mind she hadn't loved him enough, not if she could suspect him capable of betraying her to Louvois. And he would be damned before he would ever trust her with his heart again. He might as well have been clanking around the chateau in an old-fashioned suit of armor, so fortified was he now against letting her near him.

  The only ammunition she had on her side, she knew, was the chance that she might be able to make him want her physically again. Unfortunately the fever had melted what little flesh she had left off her bones, so that her figure resembled a witch's broomstick. Her complexion was so ruined she looked like a blanched and wrinkled prune. Worse, she literally hadn't a single thing to wear.

  The first day she felt well enough to get up and sit in the chair by the fire, she asked Louise what had happened to her clothes. With a sniff, Louise said if she was talking about those old rags, they had been burned days ago. An hour later, the girl returned with a beautiful blue quilted-silk dressing gown folded in her arms. And the next day a modiste arrived at the chateau bearing ells of silk, satins, and gossamer muslins.

  Since this generosity could only have come from Max, Gabrielle had spent the next two days humming and smiling to herself. When the first of the new clothes arrived—a dress of soft peach silk with coffee-colored flounces—she waited impatiently for him to come see how it looked on her. She waited in vain . . .

  "Look, Maman!"

  Dominique thundered past her on the huge cinnamon-colored horse. Gabrielle had just opened her mouth to shout at him that he was going too fast when, to her utter horror, he put the reins between his teeth and stretched his arms straight out in the air like angels' wings. His feet flapped against the horse's sides and his hair billowed like a flag around his head, and he was going to fall off and break his neck.

  Gabrielle waited until he had slowed the horse and trotted back to her. Only the ominous tapping of her foot on the ground was there to warn Dominique of the coming explosion, but he didn't notice it.

  "Did you see me, Maman? Did you see?" he exclaimed proudly.

  "I saw you, young man, and if you ever do such a reckless, harebrained, addlepated thing again I'm going to give you the whipping of your young life!"

  Since she had never even raised a hand to him before, Dominique was not particularly impressed by this threat. "But it wasn't dangerous, Maman. Papa says I have good balance."

  Gabrielle clenched her teeth and vowed to have a word or two with the Vicomte Maximilien de Saint-Just. "Get down," she told Dominique in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.

  Dominique nudged Marthe over to the fence and used the rails to climb down. He grinned up at her. "Do you want to go for a ride now, Maman?"

  Gabrielle opened her mouth, then shut it. She looked at the big cinnamon-colored mare, standing docilely beside them, munching on a tuft of grass. Surely it was ridiculous that she'd passed the age of twenty-two and had never once sat on a horse. How difficult could it possibly be if a five-year-old child could master it?

  She looked around to be sure there were no snickering eyes watching her. "Well . . . perhaps a gallop or two around the ring."

  With lots of unsolicited advice from her son, Gabrielle managed to get herself onto the mare's broad back. It had not been at all as easy as it looked, and for several terrifying seconds she found herself lying stomach down and crossways on Marthe's broad withers, with the beast making terrible snorting sounds and whipping her tail ominously back and forth. Finally Gabrielle was upright—and a long, long way off the ground.

  Marthe had gone back to munching the grass. "She doesn't seem to want to move," Gabrielle said nervously.

  "Kick her in the side with your heel, Maman."

  Gabrielle gave her the merest nudge.

  Marthe stamped her foot.

  Gabrielle shut her eyes. "Mon Dieu ..."

  "Give her a good thump, Maman."

  Gabrielle gave her a good thump.

  Marthe bolted across the paddock, snorting and kicking up her hooves. Gabrielle did a somersault over the mare's hindquarters and landed on her tailbone with such
force that she grunted.

  Familiar laughter, rich and husky, joined with Dominique's high-pitched whoops to fill the air. Gabrielle's cheeks burned. She might have known he would arrive just in time to witness her humiliation.

  She pulled aside the heron feather, which was drooping over one eye, to glare toward where her husband and son stood outside the paddock, laughing at her expense. Immediately they tried to assume their wide-eyed, innocent looks.

  "Is something amusing you, Monsieur le Vicomte?" she asked icily, lifting up one hip to rub her sore bottom.

  He bowed. "I beg your pardon, madame." He had managed to assume a somber expression, but a tic at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

  Gabrielle scrambled awkwardly to her feet. She marched toward them, and they started to back away from her. She pointed a shaking finger at Marthe, who had once again gone back to her grazing. "That . . . that wild beast is dangerous!"

  Max made a noise that sounded like one of Marthe's snorts. "That wild beast was born the same year I was. She wouldn't hurt a honey bee."

  "Ha! She tried to eat my hat!"

  "Maybe she thought it was a carrot."

  Gabrielle stopped before him, her hands on her hips. The heron feather fell over her eye again, and she pushed it away impatiently.

  Their eyes met and Gabrielle stopped breathing.

  The smile that brightened his face slowly faded. His eyes darkened until they were almost as black as the charcoal that burned in the forest. His mouth looked hard, inflexible, and she wanted to press her lips to it, to feel it soften, melt, succumb to her. Love for him overwhelmed her, making her chest ache.

  She leaned into him, touching his hand. "Max ..."

  He recoiled as if her fingers were a burning brand and, indeed, their skin had seemed to sizzle at the contact.

  He backed up a couple feet, but he didn't leave. He looked out across the fields. She looked with him. They stared together at a man in the distance who turned over the dark earth with a large-wheeled plow. Nearby was a mill, and the water tumbling over the wheel caught the sun's rays and shimmered like shards of glass. She felt his body beside her, coiled as tightly as the spring in a mousetrap.