To Tempt a Rebel (The Scarlet Chronicles, #4)

by Shana Galen

  “You have until an hour before curfew tomorrow night,” Ffoulkes said. “If you agree to help, meet Mademoiselle Martin at the Café Voclain near the Conciergerie.”

  “And if I do not agree?”

  “Then Robespierre will be in receipt of these papers as well as a detailed report on your meetings with Citoyen Allié the next morning.” Alex thumped the papers, then rose and handed them back to Montagne, who tucked them into a small box and made a show of turning the small key that locked it.

  “In the meantime, if any attempt is made to arrest or keep watch on Mademoiselle Martin,” Montagne said in his cultured French, “the papers will also be summarily delivered. Do you understand?”

  “Oui, monsieur.” Chevalier’s accent on the title made it clear Montagne’s accent had betrayed him as a nobleman. Clearly, Chevalier had nothing but contempt for the nobility. Alex had harbored a bad feeling before, but she’d hoped it would ebb once they’d begun making demands on Chevalier. Thus far, he’d done nothing but show himself exactly the man she supposed him to be—a revolutionary of unquestioning loyalty to the cause.

  “So what now?” Chevalier asked. “Am I to be released?”

  “Just so,” Ffoulkes said and drew a hood over Chevalier’s head. When Chevalier protested loudly, Ffoulkes tied a gag over the hood to stop the noise. Then he rang the bell and Dewhurst and Hastings came upstairs. They shuttled the still struggling Chevalier out of the attic and soon after Alex heard the door downstairs and she knew he was out of the house.

  Ffoulkes removed his domino and Honoria Blake and Montagne followed with their masks.

  “They won’t dump him in the Seine, will they?” Honoria asked.

  “Of course not, mon ange,” Montagne said, rubbing her arm to comfort her. “They will merely dump him in some unfamiliar location and allow him to find his own way home.”

  “That’s just as bad!”

  “Nonsense. It is a cold night. A dunking in the Seine would kill him for certain. This way he has a fighting chance against the ruffians and the rest of the rabble.”

  Alex sank into a chair at the table, her legs weak. “We might as well dress me in my disguise and make my papers. He will not help us.”

  “Have some faith,” Ffoulkes said. “He did not seem overly eager to die from my vantage point. His loyalty is already torn. We need only weaken it further and he will be ours.”

  Alex closed her eyes and rubbed them. They stung from fatigue. “If I survive to meet him at the Café Voclain tomorrow night, I will be surprised.”

  “You will sleep here tonight, and if the guard comes, then Hastings will say he does not know where you are.” Honoria knelt beside her and took her hand. Dear, sweet Honoria. Her work for the Scarlet Pimpernel meant she was often backstage rather than treading the boards, but she was be as strong and steadfast as any of them. “Chevalier does not know where he was taken, and even if he comes here, he will never find the attic room. It’s too well hidden.”

  Alex wished she had that much faith.

  “I suppose there is nothing to do but wait. By this time tomorrow evening we’ll either have a plan to rescue the dauphin or we’ll have to start all over again.”

  But they would start all over without Alexandra Martin.

  TRISTAN CURSED BOTH the mothers and the fathers of the Englishmen who had thrown him from the carriage and into the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Though he was well known as Robespierre’s secretary, that would not have saved Tristan from having his throat cut if the residents of that area had perceived he might have a purse or anything else of value. It seemed the Englishmen wanted him alive, because they had relieved him not only of his purse and his coat before dumping him from the conveyance, but also his shoes.

  The poor of Saint-Antoine, who had led the march on the Bastille and challenged Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, had barely given him a second glance. Most huddled near small blazes that burned any kind of material the residents could find. They were simply trying to survive the cold night.

  Tristan had the same goal.

  By the time he’d arrived home, his feet were bloody and his arms were stiff from tightening against the chill of the wind. He stumbled inside, and for the first time he regretted not having hired a servant to attend him. True, Robespierre had no one, and Tristan had always followed Robespierre’s example, but tonight he would have welcomed the aid in lighting his cold hearth.

  Finally, his stiff fingers relented to his iron will, and he was able to spark a fire. As he sat beside the hearth, attempting to warm his feet, which felt as though needles stabbed them, he brought the image of Alexandra Martin to mind. It was not difficult. He’d looked at her long and hard, memorizing each and every feature from her wide-set green eyes to her pointed nose to the dimples in her cheeks.

  She had tricked him, abducted him, and threatened him. He’d never known such audacity in a woman. Not to mention the courage it took to reveal herself as a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Tristan called himself seven different kinds of fool. How had he not guessed? Not known? She was English. All English were suspect.

  Except she had escaped suspicion because she had been in France before the revolution, and she had been nothing but a mere actress. What harm could an ordinary woman pose to the revolution?

  Tristan could tell the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention exactly what harm a woman could pose. Only to do so would damn him as well.

  A small voice inside him asked whether he was not already damned for his part in this reign of terror Robespierre had wrought upon the country. And now this Englishwoman offered him a chance to redeem himself by freeing a priest—an innocent man of God, or so she claimed. Tristan would investigate the matter.

  But that meant he was actually considering aiding the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The thought itself was enough to condemn him for treason. How could he even think such a thing?

  But hadn’t he been looking for a way to stop the bloodshed? This might not have been the path he might have taken, but it was possible the choice had not ever really been his.

  And it was possible Tristan could use this entire situation to his own advantage. He needed the letters he’d copied—the evidence that damned him—returned. What better way to accomplish it than by gaining the League’s trust? Then he could not only gain his own freedom but see them brought to justice as well.

  Tristan might not like the bloody path the revolution had taken, but he liked the ancien régime even less. The nobles and their privilege had murdered his mother, his father, and his sister. This abbé might not deserve to die, but the aristos the League rescued did. And Tristan would see that justice done.

  The next evening Tristan dressed carefully. He did not know what one wore to break into a prison and free an abbé from his cell, but he opted for dark colors. He did not powder his hair and wore a dark hat low on his forehead. He left early for the Café Voclain and spent an hour or so drinking coffee there and observing the patrons before the appointed time to meet. He’d hoped to catch sight of one of the League without their disguises, but if any of the patrons at the café were working with the Scarlet Pimpernel, Tristan could not discern them.

  “I confess I am surprised to see you here,” a feminine voice said in French.

  Tristan turned and found Alexandra seated in the chair beside him. He hadn’t seen her enter the café or even been aware of her presence. She was obviously much more skilled at deception than he. She smiled. “You look surprised to see me as well.”

  She sat and lowered the hood of her scarlet cloak—the same one she had been wearing the day before when she’d abducted him. And though he now knew her true nature, seeing her face again dazzled him all the same.

  She was a snake with a beautiful skin and a heart of ice.

  He had not thought her very pretty when he’d first met her, but she had been in a wig and theatrical makeup. The shedding of her costume had to be the reason he thought her prettier every t
ime he saw her. Now she looked lovely with her pale hair and green eyes. When she smiled her whole face seemed to light up with impish amusement. He could not stop himself from smiling in return.

  But there was something else in her features that drew him, a vulnerability that made him feel compelled to protect. This was the source of her true treachery and what made her truly dangerous. She made a man think she was weak and he was needed, and then when she had him, she used him for her own nefarious purposes.

  She blinked at him, looking anything but nefarious. He was a man, and he could not stop his body from reacting to her. He wanted her, but that did not mean he need fall under her spell. In fact, Tristan wagered that the seductress could be seduced herself, and if he could seduce her, gain her trust, then he could once again gain the advantage.

  Her slim, graceful brows drew together. “And what are you thinking? From your expression, it does not appear very friendly.”

  Tristan relaxed his features, aware he would have to work harder at schooling them if he were to fool her. He was no actor, but he could hide his feelings. He had been doing so for months now every time he met with Robespierre.

  “I am thinking you look cold,” he said. Raising his hand, he signaled the waiter to bring another cup of coffee. “Or do you prefer wine?” he asked. “They have spiced wine. It will keep the chill away.”

  “It will also make me sleepy, and I’m afraid I need all my wits tonight. Does your presence here mean you will help with the small task I mentioned yesterday?”

  She knew it did. She knew she had trapped him as securely as if he was a wolf whose leg had been caught in a snare. “It depends on the details of the task,” he said. He was a man of principles, and he would do nothing that would betray his country or harm his countrymen.

  “Of course,” she said as though she expected this response. And then when the waiter appeared with the coffee, she took it and thanked him. “Shall we finish our coffee and discuss the details outside? Where we can speak privately?” She raised a brow, and against his will, his heart thudded in his chest.

  He cursed himself inwardly. Why did his body assume that privacy with this woman meant intimacy? It did not. They would speak of aiding a criminal of the republic to freedom, nothing more.

  Unless he made it more.

  She sipped her coffee, eyeing him over the rim of the cup. “Do you know that for the rest of my life, whenever I look at coffee, I believe I will think of you.”

  It was not at all what he expected her to say, though she must say something lest they sit the next quarter hour in silence, but he had thought she would remark on the weather or the price of bread.

  For a moment, he did not know what to say. He looked at his cup and then at her. “Surely you have drunk coffee with other men.”

  “Yes, but none whose eyes were so perfectly the color of café au lait. If only your eyes were a bit warmer, I might wish to sit and stare into them all evening.”

  Tristan felt heat rise to his cheeks. Women did not usually flatter him so, especially not since he’d acquired the scar on his jaw and began working with Robespierre. He’d almost forgotten that at one time young ladies had giggled behind fans when he passed and fluttered lashes at him. Those days seemed so long ago now.

  “I see I’ve embarrassed you,” she said, sipping her coffee again. “That was not my intent.”

  “I doubt that,” he said. “I doubt very much you do anything without calculation.” He hadn’t intended to say as much, but he had been thrown off balance first with the blackmail and now with her flattery. He found himself annoyed and impatient to be rid of her and the way she flustered him.

  “Do you?” she said and sipped her coffee. It was an unsatisfactory answer and he said so.

  “And so you expect me to reveal all to you when you have revealed nothing to me?” she asked.

  He swallowed the last of his coffee, but it tasted bitter on his tongue. “You act as though it is I who have the advantage. You know far more about me than I wish anyone to know.”

  “Oh yes.” She swept a hand out, the folds of her cloak fluttering. “I know where you live, who you dined with last week, the last woman you slept with—”

  He nearly choked. “I beg your pardon!”

  “You needn’t be embarrassed. Claudine du Champ is quite lovely, but you did not stay the night with her. Why is that?”

  He glared at her. He should have expected this. He had surmised the Pimpernel and his League had been watching him, but he hadn’t considered how closely they’d observed him. To think one of the Pimpernel’s compatriots—perhaps Alexandra Martin herself—had stood and watched Claudine’s apartment to see when he would emerge from her bed felt like the worst invasion of privacy, worse even than having tricked him into giving them the evidence against Robespierre.

  “Did she not please you?” the woman asked as though the conversation were not entirely improper, “or is it simply that your feelings were not strong enough that you wanted to sleep in her bed and wake beside her?”

  “Have you finished your coffee, mademoiselle?” he said coldly.

  She raised a brow, and he realized she’d flustered him to the extent that he’d forgotten to call her citoyenne.

  “I have. Would you escort me to my carriage?” She smiled up at him with far more innocence than she possessed.

  He rose and offered his arm. To any who watched it would appear as though the couple had shared drink and conversation and were now departing in order to be home before the curfew. In truth, he felt as though a noose hung about his neck, and every moment he spent with her tightened it further and further.

  Once outside, Tristan was grateful for the bracing air. He drew in several breaths and then looked where she pointed. A carriage had just turned the corner and now the coachman, his hat low and his coat collar high, reined in the horses. Another man, his head ducked, jumped down and opened the door of the carriage. Tristan knew immediately these men were from the Pimpernel’s League, and they must have been walking the horses around the café while he and Citoyenne Martin sipped coffee.

  The man playing the footman handed the woman up, and she turned and looked back at Tristan. “Join me for a moment, won’t you?”

  He supposed he had no choice. They would now have the privacy she had spoken of before. Waving away aid from the false footman, Tristan leaped easily into the carriage and took the seat across from her. No sooner had he done so than the door closed and the carriage began to move again, taking him he knew not where.

  Citoyenne Martin’s voice pierced the darkness. “Now, Citoyen Chevalier, if you wish to go home to your bed tonight, you will do exactly as I instruct you.”

  Four

  “More threats, citoyenne?” he asked, his voice hard with anger. Alex had realized early on he was not a man who tolerated entrapment well. They could only push him so far before he would break and take all of them down with him. The fact that he had met her tonight meant he was sufficiently concerned about the evidence they had against him to consider aiding them.

  But she did not believe for a moment he had yet made up his mind to free the abbé. He could change it at any moment, and they were now moving toward the part of the evening where changing one’s mind could prove rather inconvenient.

  “As many threats as it takes,” Alex said and meant it. If he planned to betray her and the others of the League, she preferred he do it now, when the stakes were rather low and not when they were inside the Temple Prison, the young king within reach. But she also knew the deeper his involvement with the League, the more evidence against him. And so she needed his help tonight, if only to mire him more completely in the morass.

  “And what is it you’d have me do?” he asked. His face was in the shadows as the carriage had no lamps and the curtains had been drawn. She wished she could see him now because she could not discern from his voice whether he was mocking her or serious.

  “You need do nothing but be yourself,” she said
. “You are Citoyen Chevalier, secretary to Robespierre. You will go into the Conciergerie, demand the release of the Abbé Bertrand, take him, and meet the carriage.”

  “Where you will then spirit him away.”

  “He will be taken safely out of Paris, yes.”

  “There is one problem,” he said. To her surprise, he rose and crossed the carriage, sitting beside her. There was no need for him to do so, as far as she could tell, but he didn’t give her time to question him. “I need release papers. You have a very high opinion of me, indeed, if you think I can walk into any prison and take men out at will.”

  “Actually,” she said, reaching into her cloak, “my opinion of you is not that high. I have papers.” She drew them out and rustled them so he might hear them, as the light was so poor he could not see them well.

  He leaned close, his hand brushing hers as he took the papers. “What are these?”

  “Release papers for the Abbé Bertrand, signed by Robespierre himself.”

  “A forgery.” His tone was one of disdain.

  “A very good forgery, I promise you.” She knocked on the roof of the carriage and it slowed. She lowered the window. “May I have a lantern?” she asked Hastings, who was playing the role of the footman tonight. “Our guest wishes to read.”

  A few moments later Hastings handed her a lamp. The carriage moved slowly then, as though the horses were merely walking to pass time. Chevalier held the lantern up and looked at the papers she’d offered him. He read one, then shuffled it to the back and looked at the next. Finally, he looked up at her, his eyes warm with appreciation. Her breath caught in her throat then. She’d known he would be irresistible if his eyes were warmer.

  “These are very good,” he said.

  “I know.” She locked her gaze with him in the flickering lamplight. “What say you? Shall I direct our coachman to the Conciergerie?”