Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  He shuddered and his hands slipped, and she slid down the length of him. Her fingers tore open his breeches and suddenly his thickness was filling her hands. He spanned her waist, lifting her, sliding his shaft smoothly deep inside her until he was buried to the hilt and she wrapped her legs around his waist and drew him in tighter, deeper.

  He tried to carry her like that to the bed, but they fell onto the floor, panting with laughter and passion. He rolled onto his back and she was on top of him. She pulled open his shirt, exposing the bare flesh of his chest in a deep V. Falling, forward, she rubbed her breasts across the light that of hair, feeling it tickle and tingle her sensitive flesh. She sealed his mouth with hers, diving into him with her tongue. Then she reared back and began to move up and down on him, and he lifted her breasts like a feast before his eyes as she rocked and plunged wildly in the saddle of his hips.

  This, she thought—although it was not a thought at all, more a sudden, primitive awareness—this is what it feels like to ride across broad, windswept plains with a powerful stallion galloping hard between your legs, with the wind in your face and the blood pumping hot and fast in your veins.

  She threw back her headland let loose a guttural cry. As the tremors of passion wrung her empty, he filled her up again.

  She slumped forward onto his chest, her face nestled into the crook of his shoulder. Their lungs rose and fell together, rapidly at first, then slower and slower, as they began to wind down. Where her skin met his it was moist with sweat. One of his hands was spread over one cheek of her bottom, and he began to knead it gently. He was still inside her, although he had begun to shrink and soften. It always made her a little sad when he withdrew from her. It left her feeling empty, or as if something vital to her life had been pulled out of her.

  Perhaps to lessen the sadness this time, she pulled away from him first, rolling up onto her side to look down into his face. She thought his eyes were closed, but as she opened her mouth to speak, he covered it with his palm.

  "No. Don't say anything."

  The words piled up in her mouth, pressing against his hand, straining to come out. Do you love me? Was it me you wanted just now, or would any woman have served?

  In silence he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. In silence he settled her beneath silken sheets. Then to her pleased surprise he undressed and joined her. He fell asleep with one heavy arm draped across her breasts, and when he awoke a couple of hours later he took her again, in silence still, slowly this time, and with exquisite tenderness.

  But he didn't speak of love. And neither did she.

  Chapter 20

  Gabrielle had her son's hand tucked tightly into hers. They stood beneath the bare and withered branches of a thick-trunked chestnut tree and looked around them at the Palais Royal. The libertines and streetwalkers were as numerous as ever, but now the gardens appeared to be a hotbed of political activity, as well as sin.

  The bookstalls were overloaded with pamphlets and tracts, so fresh off the presses that the heavy, acrid odor of printer's ink filled the air. A man standing on a garden bench and reading aloud from one of the pamphlets about the rights of man was gathering quite a crowd. A huge throng of people stood in front of the Cafe' de Foy listening to an orator shout about a plot on the part of the king to starve Paris.

  "Maman!" Dominique pulled hard on Gabrielle's hand. "I thought you said we were going to visit Agnes and Simon."

  "We are, mon petit. In a minute."

  Gabrielle looked up at the sign of the pawnbroker. The three golden balls needed painting again, and she wondered why Simon had not seen to it. A spasm of fear tightened her chest. Was he ill? Had business been bad?

  Through the front window she could see the flickering of the candelabra on the desk. She remembered the first time she had stood in this place, trying to summon up the courage to enter Simon's shop. How strange sometimes were the vagaries of fate, for how different her life would have been if she had chosen somewhere else to pawn Martin's ring.

  The bell above the lintel rang as she pushed open the door. Simon sat On the stool behind the counter, covering a piece of paper with a loose, bold scrawl. It was a moment before he looked up—not until Dominique pulled out of her hand and began to run toward the back of the shop, shouting, "M'sieur Simon! M'sieur Simon!"

  His head flung up and he blinked several times, then Dominique hurled himself onto Simon's knees, burying his head in Simon's plump lap.

  Simon's outstretched hand hovered over the top of the boy's blond head, then it fell and a funny twisted look came over his face. "My dear God have mercy . . .Gabrielle. Is it really you?"

  Simon's round face blurred and wavered as tears filled Gabrielle's eyes. She stumbled toward him and he stood up, bringing Dominique with him. Wordlessly he wrapped his free arm around her and pulled her tightly against him. She pressed her face into his chest. He smelled of the same old Simon—roseWater and beneath it the musty smell of old coats.

  "Gabrielle, Gabrielle," he began to croon, swaying back and forth as he held them both.

  A loud shriek made them pull apart. Agnes stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her hands covering her mouth, her face mottled with color beneath a monstrous mobcap. "Is it you? May the devil peel me like a raw onion. Gabrielle!"

  Dominique crawled down Simon's leg and ran to Agnes, wrapping his arms around her knees. "Agnes, guess what! I can ride a horse! Her name is Marthe."

  "Can you, my precious one?" Tears began to spill from Agnes's eyes and she brought a shaking hand over her mouth again. "Oh, Jesu ... I can't believe you're really here."

  Gabrielle felt strangely shy. There was so much to tell and explain and she didn't know where to begin. Instead all she could manage was to mumble, "I'm here."

  Agnes picked Dominique up and gave him a smacking kiss on his cheek. Setting him on his feet, she stepped back and put her fists on her hips. "Let me look at you, child. My, but I swear you've doubled in size, just like a boiled beignet. " Then she surveyed Gabrielle up and down. "By God's spleen, girl, you're as skinny as a splinter."

  "Don't curse, wife," Simon said.

  Gabrielle had been about to laugh, and her mouth stayed open as she whirled to gape at Simon. "Wife?"

  Agnes chuckled, but her magnificent bosom swelled with pride. "Can you believe it, Gabrielle? Simon's gone and made himself my husband, the old fool." She cuffed Simon on the arm. "And now he thinks he's God himself."

  Simon sniffed. "Whoever said that if it's trouble a man wants, then he should take himself a wife, knew well what he was talking about." But Simon's eyes glowed with happiness as he regarded Agnes.

  Gabrielle looked from one round, smiling face to the other. "I don't know what to say . . . except to wish you well." She flung her arms around Agnes.

  "Agnes!" Dominique cried, pushing between them. "Do you have any gingerbread?"

  ❧

  "I've been praying for the day you'd come home to us," Simon said. He sat in his chair before the hearth while Gabrielle perched next to him on an oaken settle, cradling a cup of tea in her hands. Dominique and Agnes were at the kitchen table, making a feast out of gingerbread, biscuits, and a type of jam called raisine, which was made from pears, sugar, and grape juice.

  "But I can see by those fancy clothes you and the boy are sporting that it's him you've returned to." Simon's lip curled. "The vicomte de Saint-Just, or so he styles himself now."

  Gabrielle met his angry eyes. "Maximilien de Saint-Just is my husband."

  Simon thrust out a stubborn lower lip. "That's as may be, but if you had reason to flee from him once, who's to say he won't give you reason again. I don't know what it was he did, but I'm never going to forgive him for it. I told him so to his face when he came poking around here, trying to find out where you'd gone."

  "Told him!" Agnes exclaimed around a mouthful of gingerbread. "You attacked him with a broom. Poor Monsieur Max. He just stood there and let you hit him."

  Tears filled Gab
rielle's eyes, but she was laughing as well. "Oh, Simon ..."

  Simon shook his fist in the air. "I'll go after him again if he ever sets his foot across my threshold!"

  "Simon, it wasn't Max's fault," Gabrielle said.

  He shook his head stubbornly. "He promised to keep you safe. Instead he drove you away."

  "By Saint Christopher's whiskers!" Agnes snorted, spewing out a mouthful of gingerbread crumbs. "If you'd shut up, husband, long enough for her to get a word in, maybe Gabrielle can explain—"

  Simon scowled at his wife. "You forget yourself, woman!"

  Agnes sniffed. "I remember well what I'm about. It's the whereabouts of your head lately that has me worried." She grinned at Gabrielle and pointed at Simon. "He's joined that silly club—those Freemasons. Now he does nothing but write pamphlets and spout politics all day. And nights, too, when I don't keep him otherwise occupied."

  Simon blushed furiously, and Gabrielle took a sip of tea to hide her smile. Simon and Agnes married! Who would have ever thought it?

  Agnes harrumphed. "He sees a plot of some sort or other in every bowl of soup."

  Simon pushed his bulk out of the chair, flinging his arms out at his sides. "And should I stand idly by and watch my country be destroyed by the Austrian bitch and that outdated monarch, her husband?" He reached into the rubbish bin and pulled out a dark and crumbly loaf of bread that had a sour odor to it. He waved it beneath his wife's nose. "Do you see this? This is what the people of Paris are forced to live on while Madame Deficit drapes herself in diamonds!"

  "You're scattering crumbs about, you fool. Do you want us to get mice?" Agnes rolled her eyes at Gabrielle. "Three hours I wasted standing in line for that. But you don't see me wasting another two writing a tract about it."

  "The warehouses are stuffed with rotting grain while the speculators wait for prices to rise." Simon appealed to Gabrielle, ignoring Agnes. "Yet a thousand sacks of flour are used each day to powder the heads of the aristocrats." He looked at Gabrielle's hair, which was styled simply to hang loose down her back, unpowdered. "At least you haven't forgotten who—"

  He stopped and she could almost see the question forming in his mind. And just who are you really, Gabrielle?

  But she could tell him nothing yet. At this very moment Max was meeting with the duc de Nevers, using a combination of blackmail, political influence, and his incredible charm to win freedom for herself and her son. He had asked for her faith and she knew if her marriage had any hope of surviving she must give it to him unconditionally.

  Her eyes strayed to where Dominique now sat beside the coal scuttle, his mouth ringed with the raisine jam, building a castle out of the briquettes and getting his blue satin suit filthy in the process. In trying to win back Max's love she risked the loss of her son, and her stomach roiled with fear at the thought.

  A heavy silence had descended on the kitchen. She could feel Agnes's and Simon's eyes on her, waiting for her to tell them where she had been this past year and why she had run away in the first place. Someday, when she was sure she and Dominique were free of the duc, she would tell them both everything. But until then she didn't want to risk involving them too deeply in her affairs with her dangerous enemies. She repressed a smile. She could just imagine Simon going after the duc de Nevers with a broom!

  Instead she said, "Simon, those pamphlets you write . . . Do you remember how I used to draw those caricatures of the queen—"

  "But of course!" Simon exclaimed, slapping his hands together. "What a splendid idea! I'll speak to my printer about how it can be done. My tracts will have a much greater impact with your drawings to accompany them."

  Agnes heaved a huge sigh. "Jesu, Gabrielle, I was hoping you would put an end to this foolishness of his, not encourage him."

  Gabrielle thought of the duc de Nevers and his lackey Louvois, and the terror and misery they had brought her during the last five years. Her face hardened and a fiery light burned in her eyes. "No one, by the simple virtue of his birth, should have absolute power over another human being. If that is the meaning of liberty then I will fight for it."

  Simon beamed. "There you see, Agnes. I couldn't have put it better myself."

  Later, as they were leaving, Agnes walked with them into the gardens of the Palais Royal. Dusk had started to fall and the place had a festive air, with its strings of Chinese lanterns and the bustling and colorful crowd. At the palace, the decadent duc d'Orleans was giving yet another rout, and streams of carriages lined up to disgorge the satined and bejeweled revelers.

  "Stay within sight of me, petit," Gabrielle called out to her son, who had darted ahead, chasing a squirrel.

  Agnes entwined her arm with Gabrielle's. "I know what you're going to say. You think Simon is much too old for, me.

  "Simon is a good man."

  Agnes heaved a huge, nostalgic sigh, straining the bodice of her dress. "I know you'll think I'm lying like a mountebank, but I fell in love with Simon that very first day." She giggled. "When he tried to beat me with his cane for picking your pocket. Of course he never saw me as anything more than a nuisance he had to put up with for your sake."

  "Don't be silly."

  She squeezed Gabrielle's arm. "No, it's true. But after you and Dominique left, we both felt so lonely. And then one day we realized, I guess, that we didn't have to be lonely. We had each other."

  Her irrespressible smile dimpled Agnes's cheeks. "We were married at Saint Roch's and I wore a white lace gown. It was just as I'd always dreamed it would be." She giggled again. "Of course, I couldn't pretend to be a virgin with Simon—"

  "I should hope not."

  "But in a way it was like a first time because always before when I lay with a man, it was just work. I didn't like it or dislike it, as long as the man wasn't cruel, but with Simon it's so different. He makes me feel special. He touches me so gently. It's as if he fears I'll break."

  In the soft light of the lanterns, Agnes's face glowed with happiness and she looked almost beautiful. For a moment Gabrielle envied her. Not for having Simon, for Gabrielle could never think of him in any terms other than as the father she had never had. What she envied was the security Agnes felt—of knowing she was loved and cherished.

  Agnes stopped and turned her around so that they were face to face. "Gabrielle ... are things all right now between you and Monsieur Max?"

  "Yes . . . of course," she lied.

  Agnes sighed, mistaking the reason for the look of sadness in Gabrielle's eyes. "Simon is the most stubborn man alive. Once an idea gets into his head it takes root there and a team of oxen couldn't drag it out. He was very fond of Monsieur Max once, so perhaps he will come around. Then it could be the way it was before—all of us friends again."

  "Maman, look what I found!"

  Gabrielle's eyes opened wide with dread at the excited note in her child's voice, and she turned slowly, expecting Dominique to have in tow anything from a mouse to the king of France.

  Her impossible son came tottering toward her, clutching an enormous orange and white striped cat to his chest. The cat was so long its tail dragged along the ground between Dominique's legs and its ears pointed straight up on either side of his nose. A paste-jeweled collar twinkled around the cat's fat neck.

  "Oh, Dominique . . ." Gabrielle bit her cheek to keep from laughing. Beside her, a whooping Agnes wasn't even bothering to try.

  Dominique looked up at her with wide blue innocent eyes. "She's trying to follow us home, Maman. Can we keep her?"

  ❧

  Gabrielle, dragging a sulking Dominique behind her, approached the gates to the Hotel de Saint-Just slowly, keeping a wary eye out for a heavy black berlin with postilions dressed in black and gold.

  There was, in fact, a carriage parked in the white pebbled drive, but it was a splendid white landau, not a berlin, and the lackeys wore blue and silver. Even the horses had silver and blue cockades and matching ribbons pleated into their manes. And painted on the door of the coach was a lion's he
ad between two crossed swords.

  The hdtel's majordomo, a thin, creaky man with a mournful face, approached on silent feet as soon as they entered the vast Italianate marbled hall. Two other servants hovered nearby to remove their hats and cloaks.

  "I'm not speaking to Maman," Dominique announced so loudly that his voice bounced off the tall, domed ceiling. "She wouldn't let me keep my cat."

  The majordomo looked down his nose at Gabrielle's son, who was covered with soot, gingerbread crumbs, and bright orange cat hairs. The man's long nose twitched like a rabbit's. "Indeed, Monsieur Dominique?"

  Gabrielle smiled apologetically to the steward. Even as a child she had always felt ill at ease around her mother's servants and Max's majordomo, Aumont, seemed especially intimidating. "We just went out ... for a walk," she mumbled, though she knew as the vicomtesse she needn't explain her actions to anyone.

  Aumont bowed. "Madame la Vicomtesse." His face was completely blank, but Gabrielle thought she saw something, amusement perhaps, flicker in his pebble-black eyes. "Monsieur le Comte awaits your presence in the grand salon."

  It took Gabrielle a moment to absorb what he had said.

  Then she paled and exclaimed without thinking, "Max's father is here to see me?"

  "Madame. If you please, I shall conduct you there." He left no doubt that the great marechal had issued a command that was expected to be obeyed instantly.

  "I'm going, too," Dominique stated. He was now clinging to Gabrielle's skirts, and his mouth had changed from pouting to stubborn.

  The steward looked down at the boy, and Gabrielle was surprised to see his thin, angular face soften. "I believe I heard Monsieur le Vicomte mention something about a surprise in the nursery," he said. He snapped his fingers and a servant appeared, but Dominique had already started running for the stairs, exclaiming something about a red 'stat his papa had promised to make for him.