The English Heiress

by Roberta Gellis

  “There is no need to have another woman here,” Leonie said slowly. “In fact, if we are to tell a reasonable tale, such as I have gone to attend a sick relative, it would not be reasonable for you to have another woman in the house.”

  Roger could not say that the purpose of the other woman was to convince people that Leonie had not left. “Am I to starve and the house become a pigsty?” he countered.

  “I will arrange with one of the woman on the street to come and do for you,” Leonie offered, then nodded. “Yes, and that will establish that I am coming back and that there is an innocent reason for my going. We must not frighten Toulon, you know. Yes, you can eat at an inn or get meals from a cafetier—and you can come to visit me and my ‘sick relative’. That would only be natural.” Her eyes laughed at him, hot and golden. “I would not wish to fall behind in my lessons before I even start. It will not be for long. In a few days, or at most a week or so, Toulon’s escape must take place. Then—”

  When Leonie provided so reasonable an answer to Roger’s last proposal, he wondered for an instant if he could somehow make the exchange of women by force. Then her suggestion that he should visit her seized his mind. He rejected it as impossible, but loss stabbed him and he began to reconsider. Open visits to a “sick relative” were impossible. He would be followed and Leonie’s hiding place discovered. However, if the exchange worked and Leonie was still thought to be in the house, he might pretend he was making a delivery to the place. While he tried to convince himself that it would not endanger Leonie, her remark about Toulon hit him with the force of a physical blow. Before he could control it, his face twisted. Leonie’s voice cut off midsentence and she stared at him, her skin slowly crimsoning.

  “No one wanted me,” she said. “You think Toulon’s plot will fail and that he, or others will confess we are involved and we will be guillotined. You would have dragged some innocent person—”

  “No. She would have known nothing and—”

  “You know innocence is no defense in these times. What were you thinking of?” Leonie asked furiously.

  “That I love you,” Roger said helplessly. “That I cannot bear you should be hurt or frightened. That your life—you are so young, Leonie, you have hardly lived at all—was too precious to lose.”

  “I cannot think why you should have such feelings about so depraved a person as myself,” Leonie raged, “a person who would desert her lover at the first sign of danger, who would consent to the execution of a perfectly innocent and unknowing bystander in her stead. Not to mention a person who was such a fool as not to realize that once her protector was guillotined—”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Roger began to laugh. “But obviously I didn’t believe any of those things or I wouldn’t have nearly choked on my lies trying to hide the true facts from you. No, Leonie, listen—”

  “Not to any such nonsense. I do not wish to die, but I do not wish to live with such things on my soul either.”

  Roger recalled suddenly how Leonie had said, the night before, that she could have escaped from prison but would not leave her family behind, that if Marie Antoinette had consented to escape without her children and her sister-by-marriage she would be a monster. He stared at Leonie, biting his lips with anxiety.

  “Very well,” he said slowly, “I have one more idea.”

  “If it means being apart, I will not listen,” Leonie warned.

  “Only for a few hours—”

  “No. I don’t trust you. You wish to save me from myself.”

  “Leonie, be reasonable.”

  “I am reasonable. What will I do, alone in this city, without protection or papers of identification? How long can I survive?”

  “Fouché—”

  “He owes me nothing, not even friendship. Perhaps for your sake he would try to help me, but what if that should bring him into trouble? Besides, I have no one in the world except you, Roger. I—” She stopped suddenly and then went on, “I don’t even know why you are so sure Toulon will fail.”

  Sighing, Roger told her, and Leonie was forced to nod in acknowledgment. She was not nearly as pessimistic as Roger, but she did realize there was a good chance that the plot would be exposed. Again, she was not certain that they would be involved, but that too, was possible. To Leonie’s mind, however, it was not a strong enough probability to make it worthwhile to flee, leaving behind Roger’s valuable stock in trade and her own few, but therefore precious, things.

  “If we were accused,” she said slowly, “they would send three or four men to take us, would they not?”

  “Or more,” Roger replied grimly. “This involves the royal family, and they would not wish any sympathizers to escape.”

  “Then we will have warning,” Leonie pointed out. “It is not often that more than one or two men would come together to have a gun worked on. And they will send men to the back door also—so we will know their purpose.”

  “Yes. Now you can see why—”

  “Then we must leave the house another way,” Leonie interrupted, not paying attention to him. “If we—”

  “Flew out the window like birds?” he asked bitterly, but even as he spoke he realized the remark was not foolish. The houses were all joined together, and they could escape over the roofs. What a fool he had been to be trapped in his own mind. Anything that threatened Leonie turned him so frantic that he seemed unable to think. Hopelessness gone, Roger could laugh at himself. The house did not have an existing way out of the roof, but that was all for the best. No one would suspect that they could get out that way.

  That night he began the work and finished it the following night. It was a crude job, but it would let then out and that was all Roger cared about. If the roof leaked, well, that was too bad. Leonie, meanwhile, had prepared a strong sling into which Fifi could be fastened so that she could be carried. Everything else would have to be abandoned, of course. Leonie signed, but not deeply. The clothes she had were better than the rags she wore in prison, but she had no greater affection for them. When they got to England, she would show Roger that she was not naturally a dowdy person.

  And then—nothing. For a week their tension was intense, and since Roger sat up a good part of every night expecting either the escapees or a group to arrest them, there were no “lessons” for Leonie. The next week, Leonie insisted on sharing the watch with him, because he was getting so tired that his work was suffering, and that would rouse suspicion. And still nothing happened. Another week dragged past—March was over.

  “The attempt has fallen through,” Roger said to Leonie and she agreed, although there was no outcry, no outward sign of conflict among the commissioners.

  The only confirmation Roger had of his guess was that Toulon and Lepitre did not come into his shop again and, more important, the men who had been watching Leonie and himself disappeared. He breathed more freely after that, but not for long. On April third Roger and Leonie went to Fouché’s office to deposit a sum of money. Roger’s account was now substantial enough so that Fouché could give special attention to so valuable a client without arousing the curiosity of his less-trusted employees. He passed along the news that his cousin was seriously worried about events. On April first the convention had passed a resolution repealing the inviolability of the deputies.

  Roger’s blue eyes blazed. “You cannot mean what I think I hear,” he said. “Are you telling me that those—er—patriots—” The window was open and Roger had no intention of being overheard calling the members of the convention idiots, but the word stood large in his expression. “They have made themselves liable to prosecution for political acts?”

  “That is so,” Fouché agreed. “My cousin said,” his eyes fixed Roger’s with an intensity that belied his casual and approving tone, “that he too, voted for the decree because men should be willing to support their opinions with their lives, and if their lives are not at stake, they will be inclined to make their decisions lightly.�
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  “If,” Leonie whispered in Roger’s ear, “they do not become incapable of making any decision at all.”

  “I see the point,” Roger remarked, his lips twisting wryly. “How noble-minded they are, to be sure!” He turned his head toward Leonie. “You are cold,” he whispered.

  On cue, she complained rather loudly, “Oh, do forgive me, but I am afraid my shawl is too thin. It is so strange. I was warm enough while walking outside, but now, sitting here, I am growing cold. Would it be possible, Citizen Fouché, to shut the window?”

  That done, they were able to speak more plainly. “What the hell brought on this lunacy?” Roger asked.

  “The army was defeated very badly at Neerwinden, and Dumouriez has gone over to the Austrians. So far, it is being kept a secret.”

  “I cannot believe that so good a general as Dumouriez—”

  “Oh, he did not wish to go into Holland, but the convention forced him with some crazy order about liberating the people of the Netherlands.”

  “Since the people of Holland have been electing their rulers for some hundreds of years, and having in the past fought the French viciously to maintain that privilege, it seems the wrong nation to attack,” Roger remarked caustically.

  Fouché shrugged. “I am a good Frenchman. I love my country,” he sighed, “I approved of the doings of the Estates-General with my all heart. I approved of the constitution with all my heart. Now… Monsieur St. Eyre, I am come to the point where I have begun to wonder whether France would be better conquered by foreigners than free.”

  “I cannot doubt that it would,” Leonie snapped. “At least we would be rid of this government. A republic—that I do not like, but it is possible. It has worked among the Swiss and it seems to be working among the Americans. But it is not possible to have a republic governed by homicidal maniacs.”

  “Hush!” Roger protested. He agreed heartily with the sentiments, but it was not his place to say anything, being, as it were, a member of the enemy camp. “I am afraid I am concerned more with personal matters,” he said apologetically. “It seems to me that the situation is growing worse, and I must make an effort to get Mademoiselle de Conyers to England if I can. Do you think it would be safe to approach you cousin with a request for a passport to Brittany? From there I can manage.”

  “I will mention to him that I have a client who wishes to know whether it is safe to travel to Brittany and whom to approach for a passport, but Joseph will do nothing. He was a teacher of physics, you know, and he judges things by action and reaction. He says the pendulum has not reached its full swing, and there will be more violence. At the moment he will do nothing for anyone that could bring any attention to himself. Perhaps he will recommend someone who might be willing…” Fouché’s voice trailed away. It was obvious that he did not believe his cousin would even go so far as that for fear his name might be mentioned. Joseph was not a man to take a chance—not any chance at all.

  On their way home, when they were sure no one could overhear, Roger and Leonie discussed the problem in lowered voices. This time Leonie was willing to go if they could find a way. Roger’s avowal of love had given her confidence. She thought that when she was dressed and perfumed and bejeweled and freed by her “lessons”—which still had not started because the starvation imposed by anxiety had made both of them too eager for refinements—from the pose of an innocent young girl, she could hold her own. Englishwomen, she had heard, were cold and correct, propriety being necessary to obtain a husband in that country. But she was not interested in propriety or a husband as long as she could have Roger.

  The problem was whom to approach. All the deputies knew that a dangerous crisis was coming. The creation of the Committee of Public Safety, which the Girondists hoped would be their club to combat the “Mountain”—that coterie of violent radicals including Danton, Marat and Robespierre, who sat in the highest rows of the convention hall—was the first sign of how the wind would finally blow. Not a single member of that party, which appeared to hold a majority in the convention, was elected to the small, all-powerful body. The Girondists saw the handwriting on the wall but still struggled to save themselves. This meant that no one allied to them would wish to do anything that was not strictly routine. On the other hand, the Jacobins, who leaned toward the Mountain, were not yet secure in their power. They too, were not likely to provide exit papers for a man and his wife who could not really prove their identity nor produce a valid reason for leaving Paris.

  Needless to say, approaching to the wrong person might cause instant incarceration followed shortly by death under the guillotine. It was not that life did not continue for ordinary citizens. Men did lose their papers of identity and obtain new ones, but those men could prove who they were by longtime friends and family. Roger and Leonie could not produce any evidence beyond their arrival in Paris at the end of August, and they were branded by their accents. Nor were they too eager to use the papers they had obtained on arrival. Brissot was surely one of the first who would fall with the Girondist party. Thus they continued from day to day, watching each move of the Girondists fail.

  On May twenty-first the crisis broke. A well-organized mob invaded the Tuileries and besieged the Salle de Ménage where the convention met. Roger thanked God that he had moved in February, but he found that physical removal from the eye of a hurricane does not keep one from being swept into the fringes of the storm. On June first a gentleman of elegant dress entered the shop and laid one of a pair of English-made pocket pistols on the counter. Roger’s breath caught, and he did not make any attempt to touch the gun, which was a beautiful one-of-a-kind creation of Knubley and Brown that Roger himself had purchased as a gift for his father.

  “You recognize it, I see, Monsieur St. Eyre,” the gentleman said softly.

  “Is my father in France?” Roger asked.

  “No, no. It was passed along to me only to identify me as someone trustworthy. Sir Joseph was well, residing in London for the Season, when he gave us that token. I am sure he had no intention of doing anything that might increase your difficulties or those of Mademoiselle de Conyers.”

  Roger’s held breath sighed out and he lifted his head. There was no need for any pretense with this man. He obviously knew all there was to know. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “For me? Nothing. I am not in need of help. What are you willing to do for your country?”

  That was a nasty question. The answer, obviously, should be Anything I can, but Roger was not really willing to do “anything”. He felt an odd reluctance to take part in any action against France while he was accepted as a citizen and pretending to be one. As much as he disapproved of the present government, he did not feel England to be in any danger from it. And even though he knew France had declared war, not England, he felt her to be like a frightened puppy snarling defiance. It was more sensible to gentle a frightened animal into obedience; kicking it merely turned it vicious.

  “I am ready to serve my country,” Roger said slowly, “but my first responsibility is to Mademoiselle de Conyers. Frankly, I am not willing to do anything that might endanger her. Also, I cannot see what help I can be to you. I am not involved in the purchase or repair of military weapons—”

  “I am aware of that,” the gentleman interrupted. “What I wish to ask of you has no connection with military action—at least, no immediate connection with it. As you must have heard, the Mountain is planning to purge the convention of all its moderate members. I—and others, of course—when I say ‘I’ you must understand others than myself to be of the same opinion.”

  Roger nodded. No names would be named and Roger felt, as he had in Toulon’s plot, that the less he knew, the better off he would be.

  “I believe it too late to prevent the purge,” the man continued, “but it may be possible to save the men themselves—or at least some of them.”

  “I will do anything I can to help you in that,” Roger agreed immediately, �
��but what can I do?”

  “Could you hide a man?”

  “Not really,” Roger replied, and then snapped his fingers. “Wait! If he is not too old and is reasonable agile, yes I can. However, it will not be a comfortable hiding place, as it is completely exposed to the weather.” He paused a moment and then added, “Do you want to know where?”

  “No. The fewer who know the better. However, since I know your name, it is only fair that you should know mine. I am the Chevalier de Rocheville. I was once a colonel of the Grenadiers. My purpose is to see this nation under its rightful king again.”

  Roger did not groan aloud, because de Rocheville would not have understood. It would have been all very well that the chevalier should be a gallant gentleman who did not wish to have any advantage over Roger had they been playing tennis or even dueling in England. Here, where a whispered word might be carried on an errant breeze and cost a man his head, Roger would infinitely have preferred caution to gallantry. However, he reminded himself, it was only the gallant who involved themselves in lost causes. If he had any sense himself, he would have refused to have anything to do with de Rocheville. He was quite sure his father’s gun had not been meant for the purpose to which it had been put.

  Nonetheless, it was impossible to refuse, just as it had been impossible for Roger to point out to Toulon the danger in freeing Marie Antoinette. He could have no part in condemning those men, and to refuse to help was tantamount to approving their deaths. Sighing at his own foolishness, he even volunteered the use of his horse and carriage if anonymous transport were necessary. The offer was accepted with joy. He said nothing to Leonie that evening, clinging to the hope that the political crisis would ease, but she looked at him very peculiarly and he was relatively sure she guessed he was hiding something. The next day, June second, all hope was gone. Twenty-seven Girondists were formally suspended and placed under house arrest. Roger confessed to Leonie that he had agreed to help them escape to safety if he could, and Leonie enthusiastically approved everything he had done.